Lane Detection Using Steerable Filters and FPGA-based Implementation

Vision-based lane detection is a key component for Driver-Assistance (DA) systems. It is still a challenging task in road scenes with complex shadows. This paper presents a novel local edge detector, using vanishing point position as a high level information to guide the use of steerable filters in lane detection, and its implementation on a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) device. The FPGA technology has the advantages of high-performances for digital image processing and low cost, both of which are the requirements of DA systems. The main contributions of this work are twofold: 1) an edge extraction algorithm for lane detection is proposed, using the estimated vanishing point as high-level information to detect lanes. Firstly, a rough estimation of the vanishing point is used for calculating the expected local edge orientations. Secondly, a steerable filter is tuned to the expected direction for edge response. 2) a framework on FPGA is designed to implement the proposed algorithm. The framework is designed by using multi-engine technology, so it works in parallel for any order of steerable filters. Experiments and comparisons show that the proposed algorithm is very efficient in dealing with the complex shadow conditions, and works in real-time on FPGA device.