Method to provide a vehicle environment contour polyline from detection data

1. A method of generating a polyline representing a contour of one or more objects of a vehicle environment, said polyline comprising a series of one or more segments of straight lines, said method comprising:

a) formulating a series of spatially ordered points in 2-dimensional space, each representing a point detection with respect to one or more objects in said environment determined by a vehicle on-board detection system;

b) connecting the end points of said series of ordered points with a first straight line segment, and determining a shortest distance between intermediate points and the first straight line segment;

c) determining from step b) a threshold based on a measure of the dispersion of the intermediate points around said first straight line segment;

d) for each side of said first straight line segment determining, for any points that lie on that respective side, which point is furthest from said first straight line segment;

e) determining any of the points found in step d) which are further from the first straight line segment than said threshold;

f) formulating a 2-dimensional polyline comprising plurality of straight line segments connecting the end points via any of said points determined from step e); and

determining an uncertainty region based on distance between the segment and the point furthest from the segment.

2. The method as claimed in claim 1 including providing a revised polyline, comprising:

g) determining for each straight line segment of said formulated 2-dimensional polyline, a threshold based on a measure of the dispersion of the intermediate points of said segment from said segment;

h) for each of said straight line segments, determining the distance between the segment and each intermediate point of that segment; and determining for each side of said straight line segment, that point, if any, which is the maximum distance from the respective segment,

i) determining any points found in step h) which lie further from the respective straight line segment than said threshold found from g)

j) formulating a revised polyline, comprising a series of revised straight line segments, connecting the end points via successive connective points, said connective points being the end points of the straight line segments intermediate of the end points, and any additional points found is step i).

3. The method as claimed in claim 2 including performing one or more further iterations by repeating steps g) to j) on said revised polyline one or more times.

4. The method as claimed in claim 3 where iteration is stopped depending on one or more termination criteria, said termination criteria selected from at least one of the following: maximum number of iterations reached; a maximum processing timeslot exceeded; a maximum number of points in the determined polyline reached; and no additional points found in the polyline in the current iteration.

5. The method as claimed in claim 1 , wherein said series of spatially ordered points represent detections in the horizontal plane with respect to the vehicle, ordered with respect to monotonically increasing or decreasing azimuth angle.

6. The method as claimed in claim 1 , wherein said point detections are determined from radar reflections emitted from a radar system located on board said vehicle, and reflected from said one or more objects, and detected by said radar system.

7. The method as claimed in claim 1 , wherein said measure of the dispersion of the intermediate points around said straight line segment is one of the following: the root mean squared shortest distance of intermediate points from the straight line segment; the root mean squared shortest distance of intermediate points from the straight line segment divided by straight line segment length; mean absolute shortest distance of intermediate points from the straight line segment; the mean absolute shortest distance of intermediate points from the straight line segment divided by straight line segment length.