Interpolation-Based Framework for Generation of Ground Truth Data for Testing Lane Detection Algorithm for Automated Vehicle

Abstract

Automated vehicles, predicted to be fully electric in future, are expected to reduce road fatalities and road traffic emissions. The lane departure warning system, an important feature of automated vehicles, utilize lane detection and tracking algorithms. Researchers are constrained to test their lane detection algorithms because of the small publicly available datasets. Additionally, those datasets may not represent differences in road geometries, lane marking and other details unique to a particular geographic location. Existing methods to develop the ground truth datasets are time intensive. To address this gap, this study proposed a framework for an interpolation approach for quickly generating reliable ground truth data. The proposed method leverages the advantage of the existing manual and time-slice approaches. A detailed framework for the interpolation approach is presented and the performance of the approach is compared with the existing methods. Video datasets for performance evaluation were collected in Melbourne, Australia. The results show that the proposed approach outperformed four existing approaches with a reduction in time for generating ground truth data in the range from 4.8% to 87.4%. A reliable and quick method for generating ground truth data, as proposed in this study, will be valuable to researchers as they can use it to test and evaluate their lane detection and tracking algorithms.