Road Region Extraction with Longitudinal Slope

Abstract

Extraction of road region is a core technology for an autonomous vehicle which achieves safer transport. We propose extraction and modeling method for the road region in front of vehicle, using three-dimensional shape that is analyzed by stereovision. In order to model even if the extracted region has longitudinal slope, a continuous planar model is used. This method uses some structural features of road region. Therefore, it is usable even if the road has no traffic lanes. In this paper, we describe the planar approximation based on principal component analysis. Additionally, a technique of road region candidate selection using a coefficient of determination, and a modeling procedure based on characteristic of image sensor have been proposed. Finally, effectiveness of the method is demonstrated on experiments with various real environment scenes.