Camera performance considerations for automotive applications
John W. V. Miller, Yi Lu Murphey, Farid Khairallah · Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE · 2004
With the cost of image acquisition and processing hardware decreasing substantially, consumer applications utilizing machine vision are becoming more feasible. Automotive vision systems represent one emerging application area and offer the potential of significant enhancements to automotive safety. However, the relative lack of lower-cost and higher-performance cameras limits the use of vision technology in cars. Camera acquisition speed, sensitivity and dynamic range issues are especially critical due to the totally unconstrained illumination for this type of application. A successful vision system must be highly reliable under direct sunlight and near-total darkness. Conditions of extreme contrast occur primarily during the day when deep shadows are cast across part of a scene being imaged by the camera. This paper provides a survey of existing camera hardware and discusses the limitations of existing hardware. Performance criteria requirements for different automotive applications will also be presented.