Performance evaluation of vision-based lane sensing: Some preliminary tools, metrics, and results

The growth in the number of vision-based lane sensing algorithms in the literature has far outpaced the development of methods for characterizing the limits of performance of such algorithms. The large amounts of data such systems will need to correctly process to be sufficiently reliable for commercial deployment requires that tools be developed for the evaluation process which are almost completely automated. In order to gain some insight into the issues involved, a small pilot study was performed to compare the reliability of two methods used by the YARF road tracking system for locating white painted stripes in small image windows. The evaluation methodology and results are described. In addition, several proposed metrics for measuring road detectability are defined and evaluated.