Lane following and lane departure using a linear-parabolic model

This paper proposes a technique for unwanted lane departure detection. Initially, lane boundaries are detected using a combination of the edge distribution function and a modified Hough transform. In the tracking stage, a linear-parabolic lane model is used: in the near vision field, a linear model is used to obtain robust information about lane orientation; in the far field, a quadratic function is used, so that curved parts of the road can be efficiently tracked. For lane departure detection, orientations of both lane boundaries are used to compute a lane departure measure at each frame, and an alarm is triggered when such measure exceeds a threshold. Experimental results indicate that the proposed system can fit lane boundaries in the presence of several image artifacts, such as sparse shadows, lighting changes and bad conditions of road painting, being able to detect in advance involuntary lane crossings.