This paper describes a system for detecting and estimating the properties of multiple travel lanes in an urban road network from calibrated video imagery and laser range data acquired by a moving vehicle. The system operates in several stages on multiple processors, fusing detected road markings, obstacles, and curbs into a stable non-parametric estimate of nearby travel lanes. The system incorporates elements of a provided piecewise-linear road network as a weak prior.
Our method is notable in several respects: it estimates multiple travel lanes; it fuses asynchronous, heterogeneous sensor streams; it handles high-curvature roads; and it makes no assumption about the position or orientation of the vehicle with respect to the road.
We analyze the system�s performance in the context of the 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge. With five cameras and thirteen lidars, it was incorporated into a closed-loop controller to successfully guide an autonomous vehicle through a 90 km urban course at speeds up to 40 km/h amidst moving traffic.
@inproceedings{huang2008rss, AUTHOR = {Albert Huang and David Moore and Matthew Antone and Edwin Olson and Seth Teller}, TITLE = {Multi-Sensor Lane Finding in Urban Road Networks}, BOOKTITLE = {Proceedings of Robotics: Science and Systems ({RSS})}, YEAR = {2008}, MONTH = {June}, ADDRESS = {Zurich, Switzerland}, }