Fusion of visual and range images for object extraction

This paper proposes a fused vision system using range laser scanner and visual camera for object extraction in mobile systems. Fusion of information gathered from different sources increases the effectiveness of the small objects detection in different scenario, e.g. day, night, outdoor, indoor, sunny or rainy weather. First of all, the algorithm for color images is proposed for extracting objects from the scene. The labelled objects are divided into two classes: background and obstacles, based on the morphological operations and segmentation method. Range laser measurement system is used regardless of the visual images classification to the obstacle and non-obstacle only. After that the size (width, height, depth) of the labelled objects are determined. Then the knowledge rules have been used to classify objects into separate three obstacle classes: small, medium and large.