Biomimetic Control for Adaptive Camera Stabilization in Driver-Assistance Systems

Throughout the last decade, a large number of electronic driver-assistance systems have been developed in order to improve vehicles' comfort and safety. Up to now, they more or less all rely on odometric data. However in the future, a new form of information is likely to be used: visual sensors, e.g. cameras, can provide additional knowledge on traffic and the vicinity. This paper presents an inertially stabilized camera platform for high precision tracking of points of interest, that has been developed within the project FORBIAS (Research cooperation for biomimetic assistance systems). The inertial stabilization is based on a specially designed sensor system that uses MEMS components in connection with a biologically inspired control algorithm for adaptive enhancement and online calibration of the gaze stabilization system.