Advanced Driver-Assistance System (ADAS) for Intelligent Transportation Based on the Recognition of Traffic Cones

Great changes have taken place in automation and machine vision technology in recent years. Meanwhile, the demands for driving safety, efficiency, and intelligence have also increased significantly. More and more attention has been paid to the research on advanced driver-assistance system (ADAS) as one of the most important functions in intelligent transportation. Compared with traditional transportation, ADAS is superior in ensuring passenger safety, optimizing path planning, and improving driving control, especially in an autopilot mode. However, level 3 and above of the autopilot are still unavailable due to the complexity of traffic situations, for example, detection of a temporary road created by traffic cones. In this paper, an analysis of traffic-cone detection is conducted to assist with path planning under special traffic conditions. A special machine vision system with two monochrome cameras and two color cameras was used to recognize the color and position of the traffic cones. The result indicates that this novel method could recognize the red, blue, and yellow traffic cones with 85%, 100%, and 100% success rate, respectively, while maintaining 90% accuracy in traffic-cone distance sensing. Additionally, a successful autopilot road experiment was conducted, proving that combining color and depth information for recognition of temporary road conditions is a promising development for intelligent transportation of the future.