Real-Time Traversable Surface Detection by Colour Space Fusion and Temporal Analysis

Abstract. We present a real-time approach for traversable surface detection using a low-cost monocular camera mounted on an autonomous vehicle. The proposed methodology extracts colour and texture information from various channels of the HSL, YCbCr and LAB colourspaces by temporal analysis in order to create a traversability map. On this map lighting and water artifacts are eliminated including shadows, reections and water prints. Additionally, camera vibration is compensated by temporal ltering leading to robust path edge detection in blurry images. The performance of this approach is extensively evaluated over varying terrain and environmental conditions and the eect of colourspace fusion on the system's precision is analysed. The results show a mean accuracy of 97% over this comprehensive test set.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2009
• Where: ICVS
• Authors: Ioannis Katramados, Steve Crumpler, Toby P. Breckon
• Keywords: Computer Vision, ICVS 2009, Low-cost Monocular Camera, Path Edge Detection, Traversable Surface Detection