Small object detection based on stereo vision

Abstract

Small size objects which dimensions are around 0.15m are one of the major security risks to driving vehicles in the highway. Lidar and radar are hard to detect this kind of objects due to the sparsity of their detecting signal. Vision based methods are possible to solve this problem because camera can generate dense information. We propose a new method to detection small objects in the highway based on stereo vision. This method uses Multi-Path-Viterbi algorithm to obtain dense depth information of stereo images. Based on the depth information, road surface can be detected. Objects on road can be mapped to the 3D space to determine their size and location, then small objects dangerous to the host Vehicle can be recognized and located.