Event Camera TTC Estimation for High-Speed Collision Warning
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing vehicle collision warning systems using standard cameras have limited update rates, leading to significant delays in time-to-collision estimation, especially under high relative speeds, which is inadequate for real-time collision avoidance in autonomous driving.
Innovation Solution
An event camera-based method that tracks a target vehicle's bounding box, filters events, and applies a time-variant affine transformation to estimate time-to-collision using a stream of events, enabling high-frequency updates up to 200 Hz.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Use of energy by stationary object
If a standard camera is used to acquire continuous images for TTC estimation, then the system cost and energy consumption are reduced, but the update rate is limited to around 10 Hz resulting in a delay of around 100 ms between consecutive exposures
Solution Approach 1:
The patent changes the fundamental operating parameter of the imaging system from periodic frame capture (standard camera) to continuous event-based capture (event camera). This parameter change enables the system to achieve high update rates (up to 200 Hz or higher) while maintaining low energy consumption, as event cameras only consume energy when scene changes occur rather than during continuous periodic operation.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent transitions from a static, periodic sampling approach to a dynamic, event-driven approach. The event camera dynamically adapts its capture rate based on scene activity, providing high temporal resolution during rapid changes while maintaining energy efficiency during stable scenes. This dynamic operation resolves the contradiction between update rate and energy consumption.
2Use of energy by moving object
If a standard camera runs at 10 Hz for TTC estimation, then energy consumption is low, but the collision warning system experiences very large delays especially when relative speed increases dramatically
Solution Approach 1:
The patent changes the temporal sampling parameter from fixed 10 Hz periodic sampling to variable-rate event-based sampling. This enables the system to achieve high effective update rates during critical collision scenarios while maintaining low average energy consumption, thereby improving collision warning reliability without sacrificing energy efficiency.
Solution Approach 2:
The event camera provides continuous feedback about scene changes, enabling the TTC estimation system to respond immediately to relevant events. This feedback mechanism ensures that collision warnings are generated based on current scene state rather than outdated periodic frames, improving reliability during high-speed relative motion while maintaining energy efficiency.
3Loss of time
If event camera is used to achieve high-frequency updates up to 200 Hz for TTC estimation, then the time delay is reduced significantly, but the device complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts and processes only the essential event data needed for TTC estimation, rather than processing complete image frames. By filtering and selecting only relevant events (those corresponding to the target vehicle), the system achieves high temporal resolution while minimizing processing complexity and computational load.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent segments the event stream into relevant and irrelevant events, processing only those events that contribute to TTC estimation. This segmentation approach reduces the complexity of handling high-frequency data by focusing computational resources on critical information only.
4Device complexity
If standard camera is used for TTC estimation, then the system is simpler and cheaper, but the update rate is limited resulting in inadequate real-time collision avoidance capability
Solution Approach 1:
The patent replaces the mechanical periodic shutter operation of standard cameras with an electronic event-driven capture mechanism. This substitution enables the system to achieve high update rates without the mechanical constraints of traditional camera shutters, improving productivity while keeping the overall system relatively simple through electronic control.
Data Source
AI summary
The present disclosure provides an event camera-based time-to-collision estimation method, an electronic device and a storage medium, which estimates the time-to-collision based on a stream of events acquired by an event camera, overcomes the problem of very large delays in the prior art, and improves the time-to-collision estimation accuracy rate and robustness in autonomous driving scenarios, while the feature of low energy consumption enables the method to be better adapted to embedded scenarios, reducing procurement and running costs, the TTC output frequency of the method of the embodiment can be up to 200 Hz, so the method has great application potential in real-time TTC tasks, and is more suitable for real-time TTC tasks with sudden change in relative speed.