System to determine distance to a lead vehicle

1. A system implemented in a vehicle to detect a lead vehicle comprising:

a camera which captures an image of the rear of the lead vehicle;

an image processing system that receives image data from the camera, the image processing system being implemented with an algorithm that includes a preprocessing layer, an image segmentation layer, and a detection layer to analyze the image data to determine the relative distance between the vehicle and the lead vehicle;

wherein the preprocessing layer reduces noise in the image data and generates vertical and horizontal edge maps; and

wherein the preprocessing layer includes a Gausses filter and a sharpening filter.

2. The system of claim 1 wherein the preprocessing layer includes a Sobel filter.

3. A system implemented in a vehicle to detect a lead vehicle comprising:

a camera which captures an image of the rear of the lead vehicle;

an image processing system that receives image data from the camera, the image processing system being implemented with an algorithm that includes a preprocessing layer, an image segmentation layer, and a detection layer to analyze the image data to determine the relative distance between the vehicle and the lead vehicle; and

wherein the detection layer includes a coarse level and a refine level.

4. The system of claim 3 wherein the coarse level is a hypothesis generation level that uses information of vertical and horizontal edges to hypothesize the location of the lead vehicle.

5. The system of claim 4 wherein the refining level is a hypothesis verification level that determines the true existence of the lead vehicle to verify the distance to the lead vehicle.

6. The system of claim 5 wherein the true existence of the lead vehicle is tested by data consistency analysis using different dependencies between vehicle image allocation and vehicle dimensions.

7. A method to detect a lead vehicle in front of a vehicle comprising the steps of;

capturing an image of the rear of the lead vehicle with a camera;

processing image data from the camera with an algorithm that includes a preprocessing layer, an image segmentation lever, and a detection layer to determine the relative distance between the vehicle and the lead vehicle;

wherein the preprocessing layer reduces noise in the image data and generates vertical and horizontal edge maps; and

wherein the preprocessing layer includes a Gausses filter and a sharpening filter.

8. The method of claim 7 wherein the preprocessing layer includes a Sobel filter.

9. A method to detect a lead vehicle in front of a vehicle comprising:

capturing an image of the rear of the lead vehicle with a camera;

processing image data from the camera with an algorithm that includes a preprocessing layer, an image segmentation layer, and a detection lever to determine the relative distance between the vehicle and the lead vehicle; and

wherein the detection layer includes a coarse lever and a refine level.

10. The method of claim 9 wherein the coarse level is a hypothesis generation level that uses information of vertical and horizontal edges to hypothesize the location of the lead vehicle.

11. The method of claim 9 wherein the refining level is a hypothesis verification level that determines the true existence of the lead vehicle to verify the distance to the lead vehicle.

12. The method of claim 11 wherein the true existence of the lead vehicle is tested by data consistency analysis using different dependencies between vehicle image allocation and vehicle dimensions.