ROBUSTNESS OF NEXYAD SOFTWARE MODULE
FOR ROAD DETECTION : RoadNex

ROBUSTNESS OF NEXYAD SOFTWARE MODULE FOR ROAD DETECTION : RoadNex

By NEXYAD

Detection of the road, detection of the lane, in front of the vehicle is now a « must-have »
for Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) and of course for Autonomous Cars too.
Every R&D team is able to show cases of good detection. The difference between different
modules is robustness : ability to work in many cases (almost every cases).

For instance, robustness consideration led many big Automotive firms to interger the MOBILEYE
detection system : jus because MOBILEYE is more robust than detection systems developed by
those big firms. And robustness is not a matter of deployment : you won’t get a more robust
module is you put 10 000 developers on the project. You need time, big amount of data, and
« smart ideas ».

Note : This robustness definition leads to question on ADAS validation (« almost » every case is
not that well defined … how could we put some maths on those words). NEXYAD has been
developing an applied maths-based methodology for ADAS validation and is currently
recording a validation data base that will be soon available for free worldwide on the internet.

But let’s go back to road detection modules comparison.

There is another difference between road detection systems : do they need white markings
or are they able to work even without markings ?

NEXYAD founders has been working on road detection since the beginning of the 90’s and never
stopped (*). The NEXYAD team is one of the moste experienced team in the world about road detection.
That actually makes the difference, and RoadNex is a module that would take long to develop by
other teams. RoadNex is currently available on PC (windows, Linux) in the real time framework
RT-MAPS. RoadNex will be soon available :
. on electronic device of an Automotive Tier One Company
. on smartphones (so it works in real time on a smartphone usual processor ! try to compare to other modules)
(*) publication at a scientific congress in France in 1993 :
« Texture-based Image Segmentation for Road Recognition with Neural Networks », G. Yahiaoui, M. de Saint Blancard,
Sixth international conference on neural networks and their industrial & cognitive applications NeuroNîmes93, EC2,
Nîmes, 1993,

In order to have an idea of what robustness means, here are some case used to test RoadNex :
RoadNex01
RoadNex02
https://nexyad.net/Automotive-Transportation/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/RoadNex03.jpg
RoadNex04
RoadNex05
RoadNex06
RoadNex08
RoadNex07
RoadNex09
RoadNex10

How many kilometers should you drive to sample those few road scenes variations ?

For more information : https://nexyad.net/Automotive-Transportation/?page_id=412

Autonomous Vehicle TEST & DEVELOPMENT Symposium 2016

Autonomous Vehicle TEST & DEVELOPMENT Symposium 2016
31 may – 2 june 2016 Stuttgart, Germany.

Test & Development Symposium Stuttgart 2016

2016 Preliminary Conference Programme

Wesnesday 1st June

09:15 – 15:45 – Test and Validation Strategies for Autonomous Vehicles
Room B

09:45 – Building a relevant validation database for camera-based ADAS
Gérard Yahiaoui, President and CEO, Nexyad, France
Validation of camera-based artificial vision systems applied on open world is a very complex issue. An HD colour camera may generate more than 65 000 power 2 000 000 different images (information theory), so it is not possible to test every possible message. We propose a deterministic approach for building a validation database using the AGENDA methodology that was developed and published in the 1990s for neural network database (learn and test) design.

http://www.autonomousvehiclesymposium.com/conf_overview.php

Some drivers are quiet but still dangerous (in a road safety point of view)

Some drivers are quiet but still dangerous (in a road safety point of view) :

Most people think that brutal drivers (strong braking, etc …) are dangerous. The hypothesis is that they do not anticipate enough and then they are
led to brake very strongly. Many Insurance Companies developped their own onboard « dirving style » estimation that scores this kind of hypothesis.

To read more : Nexyad-ADAS

Nexyad RoadNex v2.2 – Road Detection on little road in Forest

Nexyad RoadNex v2.2 – Road Detection on little road in Forest
RoadNex detecting the lane on the road with or without markings.
The green Arrow shows the possible direction to follow.

Nexyad provides modules for ADAS (Advanced Driver Assistance Systems) : some of those modules such as RoadNex road detection or ObstaNex obstacles detection are competitors of the famous modules of the company Mobileye.

RoadNex v2.2 Scooter passing by in City Traffic

RoadNex v2.2 Road Detection – Scooter passing by in City Traffic

RoadNex v2.2 Road Detection – Scooter passing by in City Traffic
RoadNex detecting the lane on the road with or without markings.
Here, see the red line that reduces with scooters and cars; and the red surface highlighted which stops with scooters and cars, telling us it’s not road anymore, so detecting obstacles in negative.
The green Arrow shows the possible direction to follow.

Nexyad provides modules for ADAS (Advanced Driver Assistance Systems) : some of those modules such as RoadNex road detection or ObstaNex obstacles detection are competitors of the famous modules of the company Mobileye.

RoadNex v2.2 Road Detection for ADAS : Green Desert Track

NEXYAD RoadNex v2.2 Road Detection for ADAS : Green Desert Track
RoadNex detects the lane and the road surface and does not depend on the level of equipment of road infrastructure. Example here, on a dirt track in the middle of nowhere…



SafetyNex & EcoGyzer : the Sportive-Safe Driver

SafetyNex by NEXYAD and EcoGyzer by NOMADIC SOLUTIONS together to estimate the Driver Behaviour Signature.
We ask an experimented driver to drive the same path four times with a different behaviour.
Here we show the Sportive-Safe Driver :

The Sportive-Safe Driver is not Eco, but he is safe most of the time. Despite, he accelerates strongly, he slows down when he arrives to intersections and pedestrian pathways. He has only four points in the red area of the signature mapping to compare with the Quiet-Dangerous Driver seen in an earlier news

RoadNex v2.2 Road Detection for ADAS : Case of Red Road

RoadNex v2.2 Road Detection for ADAS : Case of Red Road
RoadNex detecting the lane and the surface of a road in red color.

Nexyad provides modules for ADAS (Advanced Driver Assistance Systems) : some of those modules such as RoadNex road detection or ObstaNex obstacles detection are competitors of the famous modules of the company Mobileye.

SafetyNex & EcoGyzer : the Quiet-Dangerous Driver

SafetyNex by NEXYAD and EcoGyzer by NOMADIC SOLUTIONS together to estimate the Driver Behaviour Signature.
We ask an experimented driver to drive the same path four times with a different behaviour.
Here we show the Quiet-Dangerous Driver :

The Quiet-Dangerous Driver is always Eco, he doesn’t accelerate too hard and he doesn’t brake strongly, but he passes through intersections and pedestrian pathways without slowing down… He is potentialy Dangerous.

RoadNex v2.2 Road Detection for ADAS on Road at Night

Nexyad RoadNex v2.2 Road Detection for ADAS on Road at Night
RoadNex detecting the lane and the surface of the road at night when the light are on.

Nexyad provides modules for ADAS (Advanced Driver Assistance Systems) : some of those modules such as RoadNex road detection or ObstaNex obstacles detection are competitors of the famous modules of the company Mobileye.

SafetyNex & EcoGyzer : the Bad Driver

SafetyNex by NEXYAD and EcoGyzer by NOMADIC SOLUTIONS together to estimate the Driver Behaviour Signature.
We ask an experimented driver to drive the same path four times with a different behaviour.
Here we show the Bad Driver :



RoadNex v2.2 Road with markings on both sides

RoadNex v2.2 Road with markings on both sides.
RoadNex detecting the lane on road and detecting the surface of the road with strong sun light on front of the car and the camera…

Nexyad provides modules for ADAS (Advanced Driver Assistance Systems) : some of those modules such as RoadNex road detection or ObstaNex obstacles detection are competitors of the famous modules of the company Mobileye.