Quantitative Performance Assessment of LiDAR-based Vehicle Contour Estimation Algorithms for Integrated Vehicle Safety Applications

Abstract

Many nations and organizations are committing to achieving the goal of `Vision Zero\u27 and eliminate road traffic related deaths around the world. Industry continues to develop integrated safety systems to make vehicles safer, smarter and more capable in safety critical scenarios. Passive safety systems are now focusing on pre-crash deployment of restraint systems to better protect vehicle passengers. Current commonly used bounding box methods for shape estimation of crash partners lack the fidelity required for edge case collision detection and advanced crash modeling. This research presents a novel algorithm for robust and accurate contour estimation of opposing vehicles. The presented method is evaluated via a developed framework for key performance metrics and compared to alternative algorithms found in literature