Abstract: This paper proposes a new framework for extracting dense disparity maps from a multispectral stereo rig. The system is constructed with an infrared and a color camera. It is intended to explore novel multispectral stereo matching approaches that will allow further extraction of semantic information. The proposed framework consists of three stages. Firstly, an initial sparse disparity map is generated by using a cost function based on feature matching in a multiresolution scheme. Then, by looking at the color image, a set of planar hypotheses is defined to describe the surfaces on the scene. Finally, the previous stages are combined by reformulating the disparity computation as a global minimization problem. The paper has two main contributions. The first contribution combines mutual information with a shape descriptor based on gradient in a multiresolution scheme. The second contribution, which is based on the Manhattan-world assumption, extracts a dense disparity representation using the graph cut algorithm. Experimental results in outdoor scenarios are provided showing the validity of the proposed framework.

Abstract: This paper presents a direct and stochastic technique for real-time estimation of on-board stereo head’s position and orientation. Unlike existing works which rely on feature extraction either in the image domain or in 3D space, our proposed approach directly estimates the unknown parameters from the stream of stereo pairs’ brightness. The pose parameters are tracked using the particle filtering framework which implicitly enforces the smoothness constraints on the estimated parameters. The proposed technique can be used with a driver assistance applications as well as with augmented reality applications. Extended experiments on urban environments with different road geometries are presented. Comparisons with a 3D data-based approach are presented. Moreover, we provide a performance study aiming at evaluating the accuracy of the proposed approach.

Abstract: This paper evaluates different wavelet-based cross-spectral image fusion strategies adopted to merge visible and infrared images. The objective is to find the best setup independently of the evaluation metric used to measure the performance. Quantitative performance results are obtained with state of the art approaches together with adaptations proposed in the current work. The options evaluated in the current work result from the combination of different setups in the wavelet image decomposition stage together with different fusion strategies for the final merging stage that generates the resulting representation. Most of the approaches evaluate results according to the application for which they are intended for. Sometimes a human observer is selected to judge the quality of the obtained results. In the current work, quantitative values are considered in order to find correlations between setups and performance of obtained results; these correlations can be used to define a criteria for selecting the best fusion strategy for a given pair of cross-spectral images. The whole procedure is evaluated with a large set of correctly registered visible and infrared image pairs, including both Near InfraRed (NIR) and Long Wave InfraRed (LWIR).

Abstract: Avoiding vehicle-to-pedestrian crashes is a critical requirement for nowadays advanced driver assistant systems (ADAS) and future self-driving vehicles. Accordingly, detecting pedestrians from raw sensor data has a history of more than 15 years of research, with vision playing a central role.
During the last years, deep learning has boosted the accuracy of image-based pedestrian detectors.
However, detection is just the first step towards answering the core question, namely is the vehicle going to crash with a pedestrian provided preventive actions are not taken? Therefore, knowing as soon as possible if a detected pedestrian has the intention of crossing the road ahead of the vehicle is
essential for performing safe and comfortable maneuvers that prevent a crash. However, compared to pedestrian detection, there is relatively little literature on detecting pedestrian intentions. This paper aims to contribute along this line by presenting a new vision-based approach which analyzes the
pose of a pedestrian along several frames to determine if he or she is going to enter the road or not. We present experiments showing 750 ms of anticipation for pedestrians crossing the road, which at a typical urban driving speed of 50 km/h can provide 15 additional meters (compared to a pure pedestrian detector) for vehicle automatic reactions or to warn the driver. Moreover, in contrast with state-of-the-art methods, our approach is monocular, neither requiring stereo nor optical flow information.

Abstract: Despite all the significant advances in pedestrian detection brought by computer vision for driving assistance, it is still a challenging problem. One reason is the extremely varying lighting conditions under which such a detector should operate, namely day and night time. Recent research has shown that the combination of visible and non-visible imaging modalities may increase detection accuracy, where the infrared spectrum plays a critical role. The goal of this paper is to assess the accuracy gain of different pedestrian models (holistic, part-based, patch-based) when training with images in the far infrared spectrum. Specifically, we want to compare detection accuracy on test images recorded at day and nighttime if trained (and tested) using (a) plain color images, (b) just infrared images and (c) both of them. In order to obtain results for the last item we propose an early fusion approach to combine features from both modalities. We base the evaluation on a new dataset we have built for this purpose as well as on the publicly available KAIST multispectral dataset.