Vehicle Camera Lens Contamination Detection and Mitigation

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Solution Overview

Problem

Vehicle-mounted camera lenses often become contaminated with foreign objects and conditions like dust, condensation, and ice, leading to degraded image quality and difficulty in determining the extent of contamination, which can render the camera system non-functional.

Innovation Solution

A camera lens contamination detection and mitigation system that uses software to detect contamination, estimate its type, and apply image enhancement techniques to restore image quality, while issuing warnings to the driver if the contamination is severe.

Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles

VSEngineering Contradiction Analysis

1Reliability

If camera lenses are mounted on the exterior of the vehicle to improve driver situational awareness, then the camera system can capture external environment data, but the lenses become susceptible to accumulating dust, dirt, road salt residue, insects, and other contaminants

Engineering Contradiction:

Improvecamera system functionalityVSAvoidlens contamination

Core Design Contradiction:

ReliabilityVSObject-affected harmful factors

Solution Approach 1:

The system performs preliminary detection of lens contamination by analyzing image data for characteristics indicative of contaminants (such as out-of-focus regions, light scattering patterns, and distortion). This early detection enables timely mitigation actions before contamination severely degrades image quality and renders the camera non-functional.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #10Preliminary action

Solution Approach 2:

The system continuously monitors captured image data for signs of lens contamination and provides feedback about the contamination status. Based on this feedback, the system can trigger mitigation measures such as issuing warnings to the driver, partially disabling affected vehicle assistance systems, or entirely disabling the camera system when contamination becomes too severe to restore.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #23Feedback

2Device complexity

If software-based detection and mitigation methods are used to address lens contamination, then the system can restore image quality without additional hardware, but the complexity of image processing and contamination analysis increases

Engineering Contradiction:

Improvesystem structureVSAvoidcontamination detection and image quality assessment

Core Design Contradiction:

Device complexityVSDifficulty of detecting and measuring

Solution Approach 1:

The system replaces potential mechanical cleaning mechanisms with software-based detection and mitigation methods. By using image processing algorithms to detect contamination characteristics and apply computational corrections, the system avoids the complexity of mechanical actuators, motors, or physical cleaning components while still addressing the lens contamination problem.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #28Mechanics substitution (Replace mechanical system)

Solution Approach 2:

The system changes parameters of the captured image data through software processing to compensate for lens contamination effects. This includes adjusting image parameters such as contrast, sharpness, and distortion correction based on detected contamination characteristics, thereby restoring image quality without physically altering the lens or its environment.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #35Parameter changes

3Measurement precision

If the system continuously monitors image quality to detect contamination, then early detection and mitigation are possible, but the processing time and computational resources increase

Engineering Contradiction:

Improvecontamination detection accuracyVSAvoidimage processing time

Core Design Contradiction:

Measurement precisionVSLoss of time

Solution Approach 1:

The system applies partial monitoring by selectively analyzing specific regions or characteristics of image data that are most indicative of lens contamination. Rather than processing every pixel uniformly, the system focuses computational resources on detecting key contamination signatures such as out-of-focus regions, light scattering patterns, and distortion, thereby reducing overall processing time while maintaining detection accuracy.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #16Partial or excessive action

Data Source

PatentEP3149656B1Detection, identification, and mitigation of lens contamination for vehicle mounted camera systems

Publication Date: 2020.01.15 ROBERT BOSCH GMBH

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AI summary

Systems and methods are presented for operating a vehicle camera system to detect, identify, and mitigate camera lens contamination. An image is received from a camera mounted on the vehicle and one or more metrics is calculated based on the received image. The system determines whether a lens of the camera is contaminated based on the one or more calculated metrics and, if so, determines a type of contamination. A specific mitigation routine is selected form a plurality of mitigation routines based on the determined type of contamination and is applied to the received image to create an enhanced image. The enhanced image is analyzed to determine whether the contamination is acceptably mitigated after application of the selected mitigation routine and a fault condition signal is output when the contamination is not acceptably mitigated.