Effectiveness of video camera dynamic range expansion for lane mark detection

Insufficiency of dynamic range of conventional video cameras is an important problem in realizing a robust vision system for autonomous vehicles, because road scenes have very wide dynamic range of brightness, To solve the problem? we have developed an experimental visual sensor having an expanded dynamic range, which is approximately 30 times as wide as that of a conventional CCD camera. By applying the developed sensor to lane mark detection, the effectiveness of the dynamic range expansion in comparison with a conventional CCD camera was evaluated. The successful detection rate with the developed sensor was 6% greater than that with the conventional camera on tin average in daytime, and the effectiveness of the dynamic range expansion was confirmed.