A MULTILEVEL FUSION APPROACH TO OBJECT IDENTIFICATION IN OUTDOOR ROAD SCENES

The task of object identification is fundamental to the operations of an autonomous vehicle. It can be accomplished by using techniques based on a Multisensor Fusion framework, which allows the integration of data coming from different sensors. In this paper, an approach to the synergic interpretation of data provided by thermal and visual sensors is proposed. Such integration is justified by the necessity for solving the ambiguities that may arise from separate data interpretations. The architecture of a distributed Knowledge-Based system is described. It performs an Intelligent Data Fusion process by integrating, in an opportunistic way, data acquired with a thermal and a video (b/w) camera. Data integration is performed at various architecture levels in order to increase the robustness of the whole recognition process. A priori models allow the system to obtain interesting data from both sensors; to transform such data into intermediate symbolic objects; and, finally, to recognize environmental situations on which to perform further processing. Some results are reported for different environmental conditions (i.e. a road scene by day and by night, with and without the presence of obstacles).