We present a solid state range camera covering measuring distances from 2 m to 25 m and novel real-time 3D image
processing algorithms for object detection, tracking and classification based on the three-dimensional features of the
camera's output data.
The technology is based on a 64x8 pixel array CMOS image sensor which is capable of capturing three-dimensional
images by executing indirect time-of-flight (ToF) measurement of NIR laser pulses emitted by the camera and reflected
by the objects in the cameras field of view. Here the so-called "multiple double short time integration" (MDSI) method
enables unprecedented reliability and robustness with respect to suppression of background irradiance and
insensitiveness to reflectivity variations in the object scene. Output data are conventional intensity values and distance
values with accuracies in the centimeter range at image repetition rates up to 100 Hz. An evaluation of the camera's
performance in typical road safety related test scenarios is subject of this paper.
Furthermore we introduce real-time image processing of the output data stream of the camera aiming at the segmentation
of objects being located in the camera's surrounding and the derivation of reliable position, speed and acceleration
estimates. The segmentation algorithm utilizes the position information of all three spatial dimensions as well as the
intensity values and thus yields significant segmentation improvement compared to segmentation in conventional 2D
pictures. Position, velocity and acceleration values of the segmented objects are estimated by means of Kalman filtering
in 3D space. The filter is dynamically adapting to the measurement conditions to take care of changes of the scene data
properties. Flow and performance of the whole processing chain are presented by means of example scenes.
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