Vision‐Based Advanced Driver Assistance Systems

In the last decade, the development of computation has led to a new kind of protection systems: the advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS). The ADAS are intelligent systems that help the driver in the driving action by providing warnings, assist to take decisions, and take automatic actions to protect the vehicle passengers and other road users. The main difference between these systems and the former technologies is that while seat belts, airbags, or electronic stability control (ESC) deploy their functionality after the accident has happened or in the best cases while the dangerous situation is taking place, ADAS are aimed at predicting and avoiding the accident itself. In the United States, during 2002 light vehicles were involved in 1.8 million rear-end crashes. Two systems are related with this type of accident: adaptive cruise control (ACC) and forward collision avoidance (FCA). Nearly all the ACC or FCA commercial systems are based on radar or laser sensors.