Dynamic Road Picture Extraction for Reflection Detection
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Solution Overview
Problem
Conventional road surface reflection detecting apparatuses struggle to accurately determine the shininess of a road surface, especially in curved road environments, as they often mistakenly detect reflections from road-side obstacles like guard rails, leading to erroneous results.
Innovation Solution
A road surface reflection detecting apparatus that recognizes the road in a taken picture, extracts a partial picture of the road, and computes the degree of reflection based on luminance average values, gradients, or pixel counts, excluding obstacles, allowing it to differentiate between road surface reflections and reflections from other sources, regardless of the road's curvature.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of manufacture
If a predetermined cutout range is used to extract the road picture, then the extraction process is simple, but the road picture cannot be properly extracted on curved roads and road-side obstacles are incorrectly included
Solution Approach 1:
The cutout range is made dynamic by adjusting it based on vehicle travel information (steering angle, vehicle speed, curvature radius). Instead of using a fixed predetermined range, the system adapts the cutout parameters to match the actual road geometry and vehicle motion state, enabling accurate road picture extraction on both straight and curved roads while excluding road-side obstacles
Solution Approach 2:
The system performs preliminary extraction of the road picture using the adjusted cutout range before conducting reflection detection. This preliminary action separates the road area from obstacles in advance, ensuring that only relevant road surface reflections are analyzed in subsequent processing steps
2Ease of operation
If the headlight beam reflection is detected to determine road shininess, then the detection method is straightforward, but reflections from road-side obstacles like guard rails are erroneously detected as shiny road surface
Solution Approach 1:
The detection field is segmented by extracting only the road picture within the adjusted cutout range before performing reflection detection. This segmentation isolates the road surface area from road-side obstacles, allowing the headlight beam reflection detection to be applied specifically to the road picture where it is valid, thereby eliminating false detections from obstacles while maintaining the simplicity of the detection method
Applied Scientific Principles
This section explains which scientific principles are used to turn an abstract innovation direction into a practical engineering solution.
Function Achieved in This Case
The apparatus effectively determines the degree of road surface reflection without including obstacles, enabling it to adapt to varying road environments and reduce dazzling brightness for oncoming vehicles, while also providing insights for safety systems on wet or icy surfaces.
Implementation Method 1
a road surface reflection detecting apparatus which recognizes a road in a picture taken by the camera (10), extracts a road picture from the recognized road and detects the degree of reflection from the surface of the road from the extracted road picture
Data Source
AI summary
A road surface reflection detecting apparatus includes a road recognition unit for recognizing a road in a picture taken by a camera of a road existing in front of a vehicle. A road surface reflection detection unit extracts a picture from the road recognized by the road recognition unit and determines the degree of reflection of light from the surface of the road based on the picture extracted from the road. The picture includes the reflection of light beam radiated from vehicle headlights. If the reflection is determined to be high, the direction or intensity of the light beam from the vehicle headlights is regulated.