Real-time illumination invariant lane detection for lane departure warning system

Lane detection is an important element in improving driving safety. In this paper, we propose a real-time and illumination invariant lane detection method for lane departure warning system. The proposed method works well in various illumination conditions such as in bad weather conditions and at night time. It includes three major components: First, we detect a vanishing point based on a voting map and define an adaptive region of interest (ROI) to reduce computational complexity. Second, we utilize the distinct property of lane colors to achieve illumination invariant lane marker candidate detection. Finally, we find the main lane using a clustering method from the lane marker candidates. In case of lane departure situation, our system sends driver alarm signal. Experimental results show satisfactory performance with an average detection rate of 93% under various illumination conditions. Moreover, the overall process takes only 33 ms per frame.