On-Road Vehicle Detection and Tracking Using MMW Radar and Monovision Fusion

With the potential to increase road safety and provide economic benefits, intelligent vehicles have elicited a significant amount of interest from both academics and industry. A robust and reliable vehicle detection and tracking system is one of the key modules for intelligent vehicles to perceive the surrounding environment. The millimeter-wave radar and the monocular camera are two vehicular sensors commonly used for vehicle detection and tracking. Despite their advantages, the drawbacks of these two sensors make them insufficient when used separately. Thus, the fusion of these two sensors is considered as an efficient way to address the challenge. This paper presents a collaborative fusion approach to achieve the optimal balance between vehicle detection accuracy and computational efficiency. The proposed vehicle detection and tracking design is extensively evaluated with a real-world data set collected by the developed intelligent vehicle. Experimental results show that the proposed system can detect on-road vehicles with 92.36% detection rate and 0% false alarm rate, and it only takes ten frames (0.16 s) for the detection and tracking of each vehicle. This system is installed on Kuafu-II intelligent vehicle for the fourth and fifth autonomous vehicle competitions, which is called “Intelligent Vehicle Future Challenge” in China.