Autonomous Driving
Photo-realistic simulation
Autonomous driving is a good example of an application where it is necessary
to combine perception (vision) and control. However, testing such a system
in the real world is difficult and potentially dangerous, especially in
complex dynamic environments such as urban traffic.
Given recent advances in computer graphics, both in terms of the quality
of the generated images and the rendering speed, we believe that a viable
alternative to initial testing in the real world is provided by integrating
photo-realistic simulation and real-time image processing. This
allows testing the computer vision algorithms under a wide range of controllable
conditions, some of which would be too dangerous to do in an an actual
car.
Therefore, we built a simulator for driving in an urban environment
that can be used both as a testbed for a driving program and with human
subjects. A unique feature of this driving simulator is the ability to
track eye movements within a freely moving VR helmet. This allows the assessment
of exigencies in complex situations that can be used to guide the development
of automated routines.
Driving simulator
Eye-tracking in virtual reality
Visual Routines for Autonomous Driving
Framework
Visual routines in simulated and
real environments (4MB Mpeg)
Related publications
-
Garbis Salgian and Dana H. Ballard, ``Developing autonomous
navigation algorithms using photorealistic simulation'' In IEEE
Conference on Intelligent Transportation Systems, Boston, Massachusetts,
November 9-12, 1997, Special
Session on Applications of Computer Vision to Intelligent Vehicles.
Postscript
file Long
abstract.
-
Garbis Salgian and Dana H. Ballard, ``Visual
Routines for Autonomous Driving''. In Proceedings of the 6th International
Conference on Computer Vision (ICCV-98),pages
876--882, Bombay, India January 4-7 1998.
-
Garbis Salgian and Dana H. Ballard, ``Using Visual
Routines to Drive in a Virtual Environment''. In the 3rd IFAC Symposium
on Intelligent
Autonomous Vehicles, Madrid, Spain March 25-27, 1998.
