Data Fusion Strategies in Advanced Driver Assistance Systems

Data fusion plays a central role in more and more automotive applications, especially for driver assistance systems. On the one hand the process of data fusion combines data and information to estimate or predict states of observed objects. On the other hand data fusion introduces abstraction layers for data description and allows building more flexible and modular systems. The data fusion process can be divided into a low-level processing (tracking and object discrimination) and a high level processing (situation assessment). High level processing becomes more and more the focus of current research as different assistance applications will be combined into one comprehensive assistance system. Different levels/strategies for data fusion can be distinguished: Fusion on raw data level, fusion on feature level and fusion on decision level. All fusion strategies can be found in current driver assistance implementations. The paper gives an overview of the different fusion strategies and shows their application in current driver assistance systems. For low level processing a raw data fusion approach in a stereo video system is described, as an example for feature level fusion the fusion of radar and camera data for tracking is explained. As an example for a high level fusion algorithm an approach for a situation assessment based on multiple sensors is given. The paper describes practical realizations of these examples and points out their potential to further increase traffic safety with reasonably low cost for the overall system.