Evaluation Tool for a Road Surface Algorithm

Abstract: Modern cars are often equipped with sensors like radar, infrared cameras and stereo cameras that collect information about its surroundings. By using a stereo camera, it is possible to receive information about the distance to points in front of the car. This information can be used to estimate the height of the predicted path of the car. An application which does this is the stereo based Road surface preview (RSP) algorithm. By using the output from the RSP algorithm it is possible to use active suspension control, which controls the vertical movement of the wheels relative to the chassis. This application primarily makes the driving experience more comfortable, but also extends the durability of the vehicle. The idea behind this Master’s thesis is to create an evaluation tool for the RSP algorithm, which can be used at arbitrary roads.  The thesis describes the proposed evaluation tool, where focus has been to make an accurate comparison of camera data received from the RSP algorithm and laser data used as ground truth in this thesis. Since the tool shall be used at the company proposing this thesis, focus has also been on making the tool user friendly. The report discusses the proposed methods, possible sources to errors and improvements. The evaluation tool considered in this thesis shows good results for the available test data, which made it possible to include an investigation of a possible improvement of the RSP algorithm.