Development of Hybrid Image Sensor for Pedestrian Detection

With the aim of reducing traffic accidents, vehicle-infrastructure cooperative driving safety support systems (Fig. 1) have been actively developed. These systems comprise a sensor installed on the roadside to detect nearby pedestrians, bicycles or other objects and warn approaching vehicle drivers. The sensor must accurately detect pedestrians or other objects in all environments 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. The authors have worked for many years on developing a far-infrared-ray (FIR) camera*1 and a pedestrian detection algorithm*2 (1). The FIR camera uses a sintered ZnS lens made of our original far-infrared optical material to take images of pedestrian-emitted heat. With the aim of reducing traffic accidents at crossings, we have developed a hybrid image sensor combining FIR and visible-ray cameras, with a pedestrian detection algorithm that uses the image characteristics of both cameras. This paper outlines the newly developed hybrid image sensor, details the pedestrian detection algorithm, and the sensor’s pedestrian detection performance evaluation results. 2. Outline of Hybrid Image Sensor