A novel lane detection based on geometrical model and Gabor filter

Many people die each year in the world in single vehicle roadway departure crashes caused by driver inattention, especially on the freeway. Lane Departure Warning System (LDWS) is a useful system to avoid those accident, in which, the lane detection is a key issue. In this paper, after a brief overview of existing methods, we present a robust lane detection algorithm based on geometrical model and Gabor filter. This algorithm is based on two assumptions: the road in front of vehicle is approximately planar and marked which are often correct on the highway and freeway where most lane departure accidents happen [1]. The lane geometrical model we build in this paper contains four parameters which are starting position, lane original orientation, lane width and lane curvature. The algorithm is composed of three stages: the first stage is called off-line calibration which just runs once after the camera is mounted and fixed in the vehicle. The parameters of camera used for lane detection is accurately estimated by the 2D calibration method [2]; The second stage is called lane model parameters estimation and lane model candidates construction, the first three parameters, starting position, lane original orientation and lane width will be estimated using dominant orientation estimation [3] and local Hough transform. Then the construction of lane model candidates is implemented for the final lane model matching; the third stage is model matching. The proposed lane module matching algorithm is implemented to match the best fitted lane model. The combination of these modules can overcome the universal lane detection problems due to inaccuracies in edge detection such as shadow of tree and passengers on the road. Experimental results on real road will be presented to prove the effectiveness of the proposed lane detection algorithm.