(A) study on measuring vehicle velocity in real time using modulated motion blur of camera image data

Abstract

In the view of vehicle dynamics control, the lateral and longitudinal velocities are the most important information for estimating/controlling each tire forces. Over the past few decades, the studies estimating the vehicle velocity vector using a vehicle dynamics model with Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) or with Global Positioning System (GPS) have been developed. However, there exist the uncertainty in velocity information due to the model uncertainty, the latency of GPS signal and the drift from the integration of the IMU information. Meanwhile, the two-dimensional velocity measurement system using the laser sensor is accurate and precise. But the cost and size of the laser sensor are not suitable for the conventional vehicles, thus it is used only for the development process of a vehicle. For that reason, a novel sensor system providing the vehicle velocity is proposed in the dissertation. When the camera optical system was modulated with a specific pattern, the Modulated Motion Blur (MMB) including the information of a relative movement between the ground surface and the camera is recorded in the image sensor. Since the information of artificial movement between a vehicle body and camera is known, the vehicle velocity vector can easily be calculated. The performance and the efficiency of the system are examined through the environmental experiments. The proposed system is accurate, fast and robust. Accordingly, this dissertation contributes the improvement of the performances regarding vehicle dynamic control and vehicle navigation system.