A reliable and robust lane detection system based on the parallel use of three algorithms for driving safety assistance

Road traffic incidents analysis has shown that a third of them occurs without any conflict which indicates problems with road following. In this paper a driving safety assistance system is introduced, whose aim is to prevent the driver drifting off or running off the road. The road following system is based on a frontal on-board monocular camera. In order to get a high degree of reliability and robustness, an original combination of three different algorithms is performed. Low level results from the first two algorithms are used to compute a reliability indicator and to update a high level model through the third algorithm using Kalman filtering. Searching areas of the road sides for the next image are also updated. Experimental results show the reliability and the robustness of this original association of three different algorithms. Various road situations are addressed, including roads with high curvature. A multi-lanes extension is also presented.