US 7,689,002 B2 · Method of detecting bends on a road and system implementing same

Abstract

The invention concerns a method of detecting from a vehicle a bend in a road comprising a surface and road edges, comprising the following operations: taking an image of a road scene unfolding in front of the vehicle and at least partly illuminated by the vehicle, determining, for each pixel in the image a light decrease gradient, analysing these decrease gradients and determining an image of the road edges, mathematically discriminating the gradients from the image of the road edges, analyzing this discrimination and determining edges, and an angle of the bend. The invention also concerns a system for implementing the method of the invention comprising a camera mounted in the vehicle, an image processing unit and a neural network.

Claims30

Dependent claims

A method of detecting from a vehicle variations in path on a road having a surface and road edges comprising:

at least partly illuminating a road scene near the vehicle;
taking an image of a road scene having a plurality of pixels;
determining, for each of the pixels in the image, a light decrease gradient;
analyzing these light decrease gradients and determining an image of the road edges;
calculating a number of the pixels of the image whose light decrease gradient is oriented from a left towards a center of the image and a number of the pixels of the image whose light decrease gradient is oriented from a right towards the center of the image;
and
determining an angle of a bend of the road by comparing a distribution of luminosity of the pixels.

4 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.

Method of detecting bends on a road and system implementing same

Life of this patent

Method of detecting bends on a road and system implementing same

Life of this patent

Abstract

Claims30