Method of recognizing median strip and predicting risk of collision through analysis of image

A method of recognizing a median strip and predicting risk of a collision through analysis of an image, the method comprising:

• acquiring an image of the road ahead comprising a median strip and a road bottom surface through a camera of a moving vehicle;
• generating a Hough space by detecting an edge from the image;
• recognizing an upper straight line of the median strip from the Hough space;
• generating a region of interest (ROI) of the median strip using information on the upper straight line of the median strip and a lane;
• detecting an object from an internal part of the ROI of the median strip through a labeling scheme;
• determining a tracking-point set of the objects that satisfy a specific condition;
• determining whether a lower straight line of the median strip from the Hough space is present between a first tracking point on a side surface of the median strip having a predetermined height from the tracking-point set and a second tracking point on a bottom surface;
• determining or estimating the lower straight line of the median strip according to whether the lower straight line of the median strip is detected;
• and
• predicting a predicted collision position and a predicted collision time by detecting an intersection point between the determined or estimated lower straight line of the median strip and a traveling-path straight line of the vehicle,
• wherein the determining the tracking-point set comprises:
• storing object coordinates in a time series of the objects in a memory having a first-in-first-out (FIFO) structure with respect to N frames and maintaining the object coordinates in a set of objects;
• and
• determining a set of objects that satisfy a first condition, in which a difference between lateral distances in a world coordinate system at the positions of the objects being tracked, which correspond to a kth frame and a (k−1)th frame, is a minimum value and a second condition in which, when a height of the object in the world coordinate system is 0, a speed of the moving vehicle and a speed of the object are the same, and when the height of the object is greater than 0, the speed of the object is greater than the speed of the moving vehicle, as the tracking-point set.