Using Monocular Depth Estimation for Distance Estimation in a Moving Vehicle

Engineering notes

Key topics: autonomous driving, depth estimation, monocular depth, object detection. See the paper for implementation details and experimental results.

Chinese explanation / 中文解读

中文解读待补充：本站会优先为端到端自动驾驶、BEV感知、3D目标检测、轨迹预测、路径规划、LiDAR感知等高价值论文补充中文说明。

Original abstract

Accompanying the increase in demand for autonomous systems and robotic solutions is the increase in the relevance of various depth estimation technologies. Monocular Depth Estimation (MDE) is used to predict distances by generating depth maps using only a single RGB camera. However, without out-of-the-box calibration or ground truth reference for generated depth values from MDE models its use case in practical applications is limited. This research introduces a method of actualizing generated depth map values for different applications. The proposed system involves the utilization of machine vision using YOLO for object detection, followed by the computation of the lens optic algorithms to calculate the distance. Results demonstrated a real-time environment detection and depth estimation solution with more than 90% accuracy for measuring object depth in static environments. Furthermore, the system was also successfully tested in a moving vehicle to provide an estimated distance of surrounding vehicles. In the future, further tests will be done to improve the accuracy and calculation speed for use in car safety.

Links and sources

• Official / arXiv page

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