1.1 Motivation Throughout the last decade, major car manufacturers have
introduced a great - riety of di?erent assistance systems to make
driving safer and more comfortable. Mechatronic systems like dynamic
stability control, situation dependant suspension adjustment or the
recently introduced night vision cameras are just a few examples among a
range of helpful developments. The current focus of research is on
cognitive assistance systems for high-level p- ception of the
environment. Rather than present mere images to the driver, these future
systems extract all relevant information and provide a reduced set that
alerts to possible dangers or, in a further stage, directly takes over
control of the vehicle to prevent accidents.
TheseStepsTowardstheSeeingCar were presented as a keynote speech at
theAdvancedMicrosystemsforAutomotiveApplications2007 conference
byVolkswagen [87]. In addition to radar, ultrasonic and laser sensors,
concepts include video cameras for the perception of the medium and far
range. Video will play an especially important role in future driver
assistance, since the tra?c environment is designed for human needs, and
thus relies predominantly on visual cues. For the visual assessment of
the environment, two aspects are crucial and will be covered in this
book. First, the vehicle has to know its own motion in space in order to
reliably di?erentiate visual motion caused by other objects, such as
moving pedestrians, from that of the static environment generated by the
car's own movement. Second, the visual sensor needs to cover a wide
range with high resolution and precision.
