Structure analysis based parking slot marking recognition for semi-automatic parking system

Abstract

Semi-automatic parking system is a driver convenience system automating steering control required during parking operation. This paper proposes novel monocular-vision based target parking-slot recognition by recognizing parking-slot markings when driver designates a seed-point inside the target parking-slot with touch screen. Proposed method compensates the distortion of fisheye lens and constructs a bird's eye view image using homography. Because adjacent vehicles are projected along the outward direction from camera in the bird's eye view image, if marking line-segment distinguishing parking-slots from roadway and front-ends of marking line-segments dividing parking-slots are observed, proposed method successfully recognizes the target parking-slot marking. Directional intensity gradient, utilizing the width of marking line-segment and the direction of seed-point with respect to camera position as a prior knowledge, can detect marking line-segments irrespective of noise and illumination variation. Making efficient use of the structure of parking-slot markings in the bird's eye view image, proposed method simply recognizes the target parking-slot marking. It is validated by experiments that proposed method can successfully recognize target parking-slot under various situations and illumination conditions. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2006.