Distance and direction estimation of a target point from a vehicle using monocular video camera

A system for determining a distance and direction between a video camera provided on a vehicle and a target point as a point of interest of an object in a field of view of the video camera, comprising:

• a video camera secured to a vehicle for generating video images;
• and
• an electronic control unit including a processor and a memory, the electronic control unit configured to:
• pre-initialize by mapping and storing in memory a grid of points representing a world coordinate grid mapped onto a screen coordinate grid;
• receive video images from the video camera;
• display the video image on a display using the screen coordinate grid;
• obtain the target point as the point of interest for the object shown in the video image on the display;
• determine a locus of four grid points of the screen coordinate grid that encircle the target point;
• determine and store screen distances from the target point to each of the four grid points;
• map the four grid points encircling the target point from the screen coordinate grid onto the world coordinate grid;
• apply interpolation to determine a location of the target point in the world coordinate grid as weighted by the screen distances;
• and
• using a known location of the video camera in world coordinates and the location of the target point in world coordinates, determine a distance and a direction from the location of the video camera to the target point of the object.

A method of determining a distance and direction between a video camera provided on a vehicle and a target point as a point of interest of an object in a field of view of the video camera, comprising:

• pre-initializing by mapping and storing in an electronic control unit a grid of points representing a world coordinate grid mapped onto a screen coordinate grid;
• generating a video image with the video camera and providing the video image to an electronic control unit including a processor and a memory;
• displaying the video image on a display using the screen coordinate grid;
• obtaining the target point as the point of interest for the object in the video image;
• determining a locus of grid points of the screen coordinate grid that encircle the target point;
• determining and storing screen distances from the target point to each of the grid points encircling the target point;
• mapping the grid points from the screen coordinate grid encircling the target point onto the world coordinate grid;
• applying bi-linear interpolation to determine a location of the target point in the world coordinate grid as weighted by the screen distances;
• and
• using a known location of the video camera in world coordinates and the determined location of the target point in world coordinates, determining a distance between the location of the video camera and the target point of the object.