Shadow Based On-Road Vehicle Detection and Verification Using HAAR Wavelet Packet Transform

The paper describes a novel, approach for an on road vehicle detection system with the view of driving assistance. The presented technique generates the initial hypothesis by detecting the shadows projected by vehicles on the road surface. The results of detection are then verified using the Haar wavelet packet transform. The verification step compares the standard deviations of the best basis vector of the hypothesized vehicle with pre-computed feature vector of similar values for different vehicular structures. Experimental results confirm the validity of the presented approach in different lightening conditions and scenarios. The presented technique is capable of detecting vehicles at twelve frames per sec which makes it ideal for real time pre-crash sensing.