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In autonomous driving, object tracking is necessary to gather actual information about the object of interest. The longitudinal and lateral controls of automated highway systems need a target object not only to maintain the safety distance between vehicles but also to keep the following vehicle in the same track as the preceding vehicle. So far automated highway systems were only developed for urban and highway environment depending on lane markings. In future, their application should be extended to unstructured environments (e.g. desert) and be adapted for heterogeneous vehicles. In this paper an approach towards this is presented, where the back view of preceding vehicle is the target object. This solution is independent from the environmental structure as well as additional equipment like infrared emitters. In this paper, the tracking process of the back view is discussed using video streams recorded by a stereo vision system. For an accurate and fast tracking in unstructured environment and with heterogeneous platoons the proposed method is a supplement to the detection process. Therefore, the tracking process has to be (a) applicable under real time constraints and (b) adaptable in dynamic environments. Compared to other methods related to object detection and tracking, the proposed method reduces the running time for the tracking of the back view from reported 12–30 to 16–66 frame/s.

Due to their low price and good quality, Stereo Vision Systems (SVS) are recently considered as a key factor to gather actual information about the object of interest. Today, automated highway systems (AHS) for urban and highway environment were developed without the use of a stereo vision system. In future, the application of AHS should be extended to unstructured environments (e.g. desert) and be adapted to heterogeneous vehicles. In this context, the stereo vision system could enable the platoon to be independent from environmental structure (e.g. lane markings) through its ability to detect, track, locate and recognize heterogeneous vehicles. So far, the need for high accuracy prevents SVS to be applied in automated heterogeneous platoon. In this paper a mechanism towards this is presented, where some behavioral properties have to be satisfied in terms of unstructured environment and heterogeneous platoons. Within a heterogeneous platoon, the back view of a preceding vehicle (BVPV) is considered as a reference point for the lateral and longitudinal control. The key idea of the proposed mechanism is to confirm that the distance of the BVPV can be extracted without depending on the movement of the preceding vehicle. Furthermore, the proposed mechanism has to ensure that features extracted from the back view are suitable to implement successfully the calibration process at around 10m distance. With the proposed SVS mechanism some of behavioral properties have to be satisfied in terms of unstructured environment and AHS. These properties are reliability, performance and robustness. Compared to other methods which use a SVS, the proposed mechanism distinguishes itself through adapting to dynamic environment and extracting the necessary features for the calibration process.

Umbruche im Denken fordern veranderte Formen des Austausches. Um diesen Austausch zu ermoglichen, wurde an der RWTH Aachen University 2011 mit der „Exploring“-Reihe ein neues interdisziplinares Konferenzformat entwickelt.

Due to the increase in road transportation several projects concerning automated highway systems were initiated to optimize highway capacity. In the future, the developed techniques should be applicable in unstructured environment (e.g. desert) and adaptable for heterogeneous vehicles. But before, several challenges, i.e. independency of lane markings, have to be overcome. Our solution is to consider the back view of the preceding vehicle as a reference point for the lateral and longitudinal control of the following vehicle. This solution is independent from the environmental structure as well as additional equipment like infrared emitters. Thus, both the detection and tracking process of the back view are needed to provide automated highway systems with the distance and the deviation degree of the preceding vehicle. In this paper the first step, the detection and location of the back view on video streams, is discussed. For a definite detection in a heterogeneous platoon several features of the back view are detected. A method is proposed to run rejection cascades generated by the AdaBoost classifier theory on the video stream. Compared to other methods related to object detection, the proposed method reduces the running time for the detection of the back view to 0.03–0.08 s/frame. Furthermore, the method enables a more accurate detection of the back view.

Innovationen werden nicht mehr von einzelnen hochspezialisierten Fachkraften entwickelt, sondern erfordern interdisziplinare Teams. Interdisziplinares Arbeiten ist damit fur eine exzellente Ingenieurausbildung unabdingbar. Nach wie vor ist die Ingenieurausbildung jedoch stark disziplinlastig, neue Konzepte sowohl fur die akademische Ausbildung als auch fur interdisziplinare Promotionen sind notwendig.