Mixed Event-Frame Vision System for Daytime Preceding Vehicle Taillight Signal Measurement Using Event-Based Neuromorphic Vision Sensor

Abstract

An important aspect of the perception system for intelligent vehicles is the detection and signal measurement of vehicle taillights. In this work, we present a novel vision-based measurement (VBM) system, using an event-based neuromorphic vision sensor, which is able to detect and measure the vehicle taillight signal robustly. To the best of our knowledge, it is for the first time the neuromorphic vision sensor is paid attention to for utilizing in the field of vehicle taillight signal measurement. The event-based neuromorphic vision sensor is a bioinspired sensor that records pixel-level intensity changes, called events, as well as the whole picture of the scene. The events naturally respond to illumination changes (such as the ON and OFF state of taillights) in the scene with very low latency. Moreover, the property of a higher dynamic range increases the sensor sensitivity and performance in poor lighting conditions. In this paper, we consider an event-driven solution to measure vehicle taillight signals. In contrast to most existing work that relies purely on standard frame-based cameras for the taillight signal measurement, the presented mixed event/frame system extracts the frequency domain features from the spatial and temporal signal of each taillight region and measures the taillight signal by combining the active-pixel sensor (APS) frames and dynamic vision sensor (DVS) events. A thresholding algorithm and a learned classifier are proposed to jointly achieve the brake-light and turn-light signal measurement. Experiments with real traffic scenes demonstrate the performance of measuring taillight signals under different traffic conditions with a single event-based neuromorphic vision sensor. The results show the high potential of the event-based neuromorphic vision sensor being used for optical signal measurement applications, especially in dynamic environments.