Communications of the ACM
An Intelligent Vehicle That Can Detect Pedestrians at Nighttime
A pedestrian detection system for cars developed by researchers at Carlos III University of Madrid uses infrared cameras to capture the body heat of people up to 40 meters from a vehicle.
Credit: AutomotiveIT International
Carlos III University of Madrid (UC3M) researchers have developed a pedestrian detection system for cars that works in low visibility conditions by capturing body heat with infrared cameras. The system includes two thermal cameras to identify pedestrians and alert the driver to them.
"With the model being used in our research, pedestrians up to 40 meters away can be detected, although this distance could be extended if we substitute the lens with one that has greater focus range," says UC3M professor Daniel Olmeda.
The system uses new image-pattern recognition techniques to identify pedestrians. "The algorithm developed detects pedestrian presence according to certain silhouette features, because we have confirmed that the contour of objects in infrared images have congruent phase features that do not vary with temperature and contrasting," Olmeda says.
The researchers say the technology also could be applied to the field of robotics and note the system could be easily installed in existing vehicles. They say car models already exist that incorporate cameras in the visible spectrum and "integration of a system based on far infrared would not be very different."
From Carlos III University of Madrid (Spain)
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