Graph model-based lane-marking feature extraction for lane detection

Abstract

This paper presents a robust, efficient lane-marking feature extraction method using a graph model-based approach. To extract the features, the proposed hat filter with adaptive sizes is first applied to each row of an input image and local maximum values are extracted from the filter response. The features with the maximum values are fed as nodes to a connected graph structure, and the edges of the graph are constructed using the proposed neighbor searching method. Nodes related to lane-markings are then selected by finding a connected subgraph in the graph. The selected nodes are fitted to line segments as the proposed features of lane-markings. The experimental results show that the proposed method not only yields at least 2.2% better performance compared to the existing methods on the KIST dataset, which includes various types of sensing noise caused by environmental changes, but also improves at least 1.4% better than the previous methods on the Caltech dataset which has been widely used for the comparison of lane marking detection. Furthermore, the proposed lane marking detection runs with an average of 3.3 ms, which is fast enough for real-time applications.