A Lidar-Based Approach for Near Range Lane
Detection
Alexander von Reyher, Armin Joos
DaimlerChrysler AG, REVAA
Stuttgart, Germany
Email: [ Alexander.Reyher,Armin.Joos]@daimlerchrysler.com
Abstmct- This paper presents an approach for abject and lane
detection using only a scanning lidar sensor. The test vehicle
used and the applied lane detection algorithm based on an
Extended Kalman-Filter are described. Measurements on public
roads are performed and compared to the results of an optical
lane recognition as a reference.
I. INTRODUCTION
Current ACC (Adaptive Cruise Control) systems like the
Distronic of the DaimlerChrysler AG adapt the ego vehicle’s
(EV) speed in order to keep a certain distance towards the
preceding vehicle (PV). By automatically interventing via
engine and brakes the driver is reliefed of taking action in
a speed range above 30 km/h. The information about the PV’s
position and speed is provided by a radar [5] or a lidar sensor
[4] mounted in close proximity to the front bumper of the car.
Today’s ACC systems choose the PV by predicting [5] the
EV’s future path based on the actual driving conditions (speed,
yaw-rate and steering angle), Using this method, situations of
cutting in or out vehicles or the driving on lanes of narrow
width can not always be judged sufficiently fast to avoid a loss
of comfort in longitudinal control. An additional lane detecting
sensor could solve those problems but also increases the costs
of the system.
Extending ACC towards stop & go traffic is one main point
of actual development activities [11][5] and will be one of
the future assisthg systems to be introduced into the market.
- However, current sensor constellations are designed for ACC
resulting in a small horizontal opening angle. Situations of stop
& go traffic come along with lower distances towards other
road users and lateral accelerations up to 0.4 g (71. To deal
with those kind of situations first of all a higher opening angle
of the sensor is needed. To be able to detect cutting in or out
maneuvres as soon as possible a lane detecting sensor would
be very helpful. To offer additional lateral control, information
about the lane’s shape is necessary. Depending on the system
requirements several different types of sensors may have to be
installed. As an alternative to a multi-sensor type approach,
there is a great interest in using only one sensor type to detect
relative objects as well as the lane.
For this reason several research activities aim to add lane
predicting functionality to existing object detecting sensor
concepts. [ 11 describes a way to extract pavement positions out
of radar measurements while [2j is determining the borders of
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Hermann Winner
Technische Universivat Darmstadt
Darmstadt, Germany
Email: winner@fzd.tu-darmstadt.de
the road by using standing objects detected by a laserscannet.
[3] presents an approach of detecting the borders of the road
using a one layer laserscanner directed onto the street. How-
ever, neither of these solutions supports an additional object
detection or delivers information about the lane markings
which in many 5ases (e.g. highways) is the most needed.
This paper prestnts a new approach exclusively based on lidar
sensors. Aiming to support a stop & go application it is able
to detect appropriate objects and identify their iane of travel
by detecting the position of the lane markings. Therefore the
distance measurements and the appropriate intensity values of
a multiplane lidar sensor are used. A lane marking and a typi-
cal road surface have very different reflectivity characteristics.
This phenomen is used to localize the lane markings position
and determine the shape of the future lane of travel by applying
a lane detection algorithm.
11. SYSTEM OVERVIEW
The focus of this paper is lane detection performed with
lidar sensors. However, for the choice of the sensor the addi-
tional object detection has to be considered. Aiming to detect
surrounding objects it is necessary to have one measuring
plane horizontally directed towards the vehicle’s environment.
The horizontal field of view has to fulfill the constraints posed.
by a stop & go application. Those constraints include the
eariy detection of a cutting in vehicle and the ability to track
the preceding vehicle even in curves with small radii. [7]
describes the maneuvre space of a EV based on the expected
lateral and longitudinal accelpations in stop & go traffic and
derives different possible sensor constellations. The required
horizontal opening angle is calculated to approximately f25
degrees and the detection range to 100 m.
Also aiming to detect the lane markings demands at least one
more measuring plane which has to be oriented towards the
street. For a good detection of the road curvature, two or even
more of those planes should be available. The system should
also be able to detect markings up to a certain lateral and
longitudinal distance and up to a certain threshold ,value for
the roads curve radius, A reasonable threshold for a detectable
lane width is 6 m. This also ‘covers situations of the EV
not driving in the center of a lane of normal width. The
longitudinal detection limit is mainly given by the sensor
characteristics. Due to initial measurements, the limit shall be
 set at a maximum of 30 m. The detectable curve radius is set
to 80 m, which is the mandatory minimal radius for streets
designed for a speed of 50 km/h given in [13]. The chosen
thresholds lead to Fig. 1 showing the virtual opening angle ct
of a possible sensor.
l0m . 20 m 30 nt
Fig. 1. Virtual opening angle a for a possible sensor
It is obvious that the situation shown in Fig. I can be
influenced by mounting position and quantity of the sensors.
For example, mounting one sensor on the bumper would lead
to a requested sensor opening angle a of nearly I80 degrees.
An additional aspect for the quality of object and lane de-
tection is the horizontal re"s1ution between the single laser
beams. The higher the resolution the better the quality of the
detection of an object's position and width. Additionally, more
beams can be expected to hit the Iane markings.
However, the choice of the sensor@) can hardly fulfill all the
set requirements in order to keep a reasonable complexity of
the system. To meet the constraints as cIosely as possible a
solution according to Fig. 2 was designed.
6
. .
Om IO m 20 in 30 in
Fig. 2. Sensor ConsteHation
It includes 2 scanning lidars with a horizonta1 opening angle
of 36 degrees each, a horizontal resolution of 0.1 degrees and
6 measurement planes with a vertical opening angle of 1.57
degrees each. Both sensors are slightly rotated around their z-
axis which results in an angle a of approximately 50 degrees.
The vertically skipped sensor planes will be referenced via the
numbers given in Fig. 2. The constellation has mainly been
chosen in order to have a good view of the lane markings
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which can be detected in the planes 1 to 5. The additional
object tracking is only applied to plane 6 which is aligned
nearly paralIel to the road. In front of the car there is a
small triangular ares ( A x 2.5 m 2 ) which is not covered by
the sensors. However, knowing that objects have to pass the
detection area of the sensor to enter into this zone, prevention
can be taken via the object tracking.
The sensor constellation presented in Fig. 2 has been imple-
mented into a Mercedes Benz E-Class test vehicle (Fig. 3)
using an additional bumper for sensor mounting.
Fig. 3. Test Vehicle
111.;LANEDETECTION SYSTEM
In this chapter [he lane detection system, which is imple-
mented in the test vehicle, shall be described in detail. Fig. 4
.i$
gives a brief overview.
- Object Tracking
OTi
-
1
FC
Exc1udpfal.w t w a s u t e m e m
k i n e Esrimariw
Fig. 4. Lane Detection System
Two computers are integrated into the test vehicle, one laptop
(LP) and one Linux PC (PC). The two lidar sensors (LS)
are communicating with the laptop which is collecting their
measurement data (distance and intensity value for every
single laser beam). After completing one scan cycle the
corresponding data is transmitted to the PC where it can be
processed for lane detection. The transmitted data includes a
timestamp taken on the laptop, which is used for the data
synchronisation of both sensors,
The object tracking (QT) is applied to plane 6 of both sensors.
As the OT is not part of the work presented in this paper
refer to [2] for more detailed information about object tracking
algorithms based on lidar data.
Planes 1 to 5 enter the main path of the system, which i s
the extraction of the lanes positions (ELP) described in ,[6].
The resulting extracted positions (EP) are prefiltered with
the objects tracked by the (OT) in a way to exclude false
measurements caused by other vehicles. The resting EP serve
as input into the Lane Estimation Algorithm (LE), which
 I .-

consists of an Extended Kalman-Filter (EKF). The operations

performed during the LE are shown in the following flowchart
and shall be discussed step by step.

I
h

Fig. 5 . Lane Estimation Algorithm LE y Laser "\"" Center

Although the filter model used in the EKF has been fully
described in [6] a short summary is given to allow a better
understanding. It is followed by a description of the data
association (DA) used to choose the valid EPs for the filter.

A. Extended Kalman Fiiter EKF

In the EKF the estimated lane is represented by a circular
shape model described by the 4-dimensional state vector
Fig. 6 . Coordinate Transformation

The circular madel is chosen because a change of the curvature equation ( 5 ) . The angle y represents the vertical inclination
c has low impact in near range where the sensor is mainly ex-
angle and p the horizontal angle of the outgoing beam.
pected to detect the lane. Ayoff describes the lateral distance
of the vehicle's center to the right lane, b the lane's width, and y = d.siny.sir1,!3 (3
A$ is the angle between the vehicle's longitudinal axis and
the lane. The filter is made up of two main steps, the prediction It is obvious that the uncertainty introduced into y results
step and the update step (see Fig. 5). They are given by: from the measurements of distance and angle. The possible
+ error of the distance measurement d is known via the 3u-
Prediction Step : x = A?? +
B?i' + d value which IS given by the supplier of the sensor. To estimate
(2)
the angles influence it is important to know that a laser beam
Update S t e p : 2 = h ( 2 ) ? + (3)
has a certain vertical and horizontal opening angle which is
During the prediction step (2) the actual state vector (1) is indicated in Fig. 6. The vertical opening angle is very large for
predicted in time by taking into account the inputs 2 of the the chosen bensor (Ay = 1.57"), while the horizontal angle
dynamic system which are in our case the vehicle's velocity (A@= 0.1") is rather small. However, within the opening area
and the yaw-rate. The system noise i s assumed to be zero of the beam the position of the reflection can not be exactly
mean gaussian. calculated exclusively based on the measured distance d and
The update step (3) o f the filter is based on the non-linear the direction of the outgoing beam. That is why the reflecting
equation: point is always assumed to be in the center of the beam. To
get an idea of the influence of this assumption we choose a
1
hjz) = y = (-
c
+
Ayofp) COS A+ certain angle -j and a fixed sensor height h, which corresponds
(4) to the one integrated in the test vehicle. For the chosen casts
1 1 we can now plot the lateral error e(y) against the horizontal
_f (- - ab)2 - (x - ;( -t- Ayoff) sin A$)2
c angle ,!3 of the outgoing beam introduced by a positive error
with e+ or a negative error e-' of d, p and y. Fig. 7 shows those
a t (0, I). plots for two different values of y corresponding to plane 1
and 5.
a is used to distinguish the right ( a = 0) and the left ( a = 1) The uncertainty introduced by e(d) results in.a straight line
lane. The measurement equation (41is expressed in terms of through origin. This behaviour is quite logic since in the
Cartesian coordinates [x,y] in order to reduce the complexity direction of 0' the lateral position is always zero. Its gradient
of the model. They are calculated from the measured distance can be calculated to approximately 7.5 lop3. The difference -
d against the horizontal and the vertical direction angle of the between plane 1 and 5 is too small to be observed in the
outgoing laser beam as shown in Fig. 6. plot. e ( 7 ) introduces an'error that lies at around 3 mm
As equation (4) is non-linear, the measurement noise T' is which can be neglected. The error introduced by e(P) lies
exclusively considered for y, which can be calculated via at around 3 cm for plane 5 and is neglegable for plane 1.

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This behaviour underlines the fact, that e(B) depends much
more on the measurement plane than e(?) does. However,
aiming to determine the measurement noise for y the resulting
errors in Fig. 7 can not be summed since they all have the
same influence. That is why e(y) is calculated by taking the
according maximum error of the three components as follows:
(6) and (7) can now be used to determine the actual mea-
surement noise depending on the horizontal angle /? of the
outgoing beam. Fig. 7 underlines that the accuracy of the
distance measurement is the main influence.
A very interesting point is the accuracy of the measurement
in situations of pitch movement or vertical road curvature.
Having no knowledge about the actual pitch angle of the
vehicle we have to assume that the vertical orientation of
the sensor towards the street is always the same. Especially
d u ~ n ga pitch movement this assumption is wrong and an
error e(?) is introduced. As shown in Fig. 7 the resulting
error e(y) i s very small and the system is very robust towards
pitch movement.
B. Data Association
[6] describes a way to check the extracted lane positions EP
by using data about surrounding objects to exclude possible
false detections. However, not all false detections are covered
by this approach. Printings on the road can not be excluded
this way but disturb the performance of the filter. In some
cases the best EP has to be chosen out of two or even more
possible EPs. Thus all the lane positions have to be checked
according to the actual lane estimation. This can be done by
applying the so called gating described in [8] which is often
used in tracking applications.
According to [XI the following thresholding condition can be
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applied to the EPs:
with
+
T (k) = j t ( k ) - H(lc)%(klk- l)], (9)
and
S(k) = H ( k ) P ( k l k- l ) H ( k ) T 4- R ( k ) . (10)
4
r (k) and S(k) denote the corresponding residual vector and
the residual covariance matrix S of the EKE R(k) represents
the measurement noise depending on the horizontal angle as
described in (6)and (7). Statistically more than 99.8% of all
valid measurements lie within the gate defined by choosing
c=3. Every potential EP detected in .the lidar measurement
that doesn't fit into this condition is not considered for the
lane estimation. In the case of two EPs being located in the
same sensor plane and fulfilling condition (8) only the best
fitting enters the EKE
Iv. RESULTS
The preceding chapters presented a system aimed to detect
the position of lane markings on a road exclusively based on
lidar sensors. The detected lane markings are used to estimate
the lane's state vector 3 using an Extended Kalman Filter.
The integration of the system into a test vehicle a d t h e
implementation of the algorithms were described, a validation
of its functionality is still missing. To make up for this the
system has been tested on public roads.
Verifying a systems functionality requires a reference. The
easiest way to get one in our case is the usage of a mono-
camera mounted in close proximity to the rear-view mirror
and an additional lane detection algorithm. The lidar based
.
approach is supposed to work in near range and especially in
stop & go situations that come along with many surrounding
objects. Due to the mounting position of the camera most
of the existing lane information would he covered by other
vehicles whereas the lidar system could still detect the lane
markings. That is why the measurements have to be taken in
situations of free flowing traffic in a speed range superior to 30
km/h to get comparable results. Further more the video system
can not deliver a real ground truth since it deals with data of
a certain measurement noise and assumptions about a lane's
characteristics. However, video systems are already built into
series cars [12] and have proved their accuracy in matters of
lane detection over a long period of time in DaimIerChrysler
research. That is why the results of the developed lidar lane
detection (LLD) shall be compared to those of an optical
lane recognition system (OLR). Even if the tests can not he
performed in stop & go traffic they give a first idea of the
LLD's quality.
The implemented OLR algorithm according to [9] is running
on the same PC as the LLD approach. It is based on an EKF
similar to the one chosen in this paper. Its filter model uses an
approximated clothoide with an additional state c1 describing
 the curvatures change. The used state vector
system adds up to:
4
x, = I CO c1 AYoff b A$
The filter dynamics are not the same for both systems and
could not be adapted for every measurement, which may result
in a slightly different behaviour. However, the situations in
which the measurements were taken were chosen to be of
low dynamics to keep its influence as low as possible. Test
drives were performed on a national highway nearby Stuttgart,
Germany. Both systems, the OLR and LLD were activated
during the test drives. Sequences of 400 consecutive time
steps (1 step = 100 ms) were stored. The first 50 timesteps
are mainly influenced by transient effects and shall not be
considered. The cases of a straight road, a curved road and a
road with changing curvature will now be discussed.
A. Straight Road
Fig. 8 shows a measurement on a straight road taken at 76
km/h.
zuof the video m is approximately 0.02 m which is significantly below the
measurement noise of the sensor. The lane width estimated
by the LLD is changing less than the one of the OLR which
IT (1 1) at the same time is the reason for the high mean difference
of 0.09 m (Tab. I). Without having a ground truth value for
the lane width this behaviour can not be sufficiently judged.
However, the plots show that both estimates lie in the same
range and the given differences are caused by the different
dynamics of the filter. The lateral offset and the angle offset
show no significant differences between the estimates of OLR
and LLD. In all the measurements on a straight road show a
high level of agreement.
B. Curved Road
To take the next step the system performance was tested
on a curved road. The following sequence was taken on a
countryroad driving at a velocity of 65 k"h.
x lo-'
I I I

-2.3
0 200 400 0 200 400
Time Step Time Step

-2- '1.3

-
0 200 400 0 200 400
Time Step Time Step

0 200 400 -'O 200 400

Time Step Time Step

Fig. 9. Curved Road (64km/h) [ - OLR - - LLD 1

; 2 - -1
0 200 400 0 200 400
Time Step Time Step
TABLE 11
Fig. 8. Straight Road (76 kmh) [ - OLR - - LLD 1 M E A NDLSTANCE C U R V E D ROAD

TABLE I State 1 Mean Distance OLR - LLD

MEAND I S T A N CSET R A I G H T R O A D
State Mean Dismce OLR - LLD
C 5.10-5 1m.
b 0.09 nr
Looking at the curvature, it can be observed that the estimates
are both approximately zero, as they should on a straight
road. Choosing the OLR as the reference system the mean
error of the curvature estimated by he LLD is about .5 .
m (Tab. I). The resulting lateral error in a distance of 20
C 1 1.5.10-4
1
1m
b I 0.05 m
Once again the plots for OLR and LLD are very similar. The
mean distances between the estimates of both systems are
given in Tab. 11. The different dynamic behaviour of the lane
width estimate can be observed again.
C. Curvature Change
We treated the cases of low curvature dynamics like driving
on a straight or a constant curvature road. We will now have
a look at a measurement with dynamical curvature changes.

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 Fig. I O presents this case on a highway driving at a velocity
of 86 km/h.The vehicle is driving in a curve, at time step
100 the curvature decreases slowly to zero which is reached
at time step 340.
V. CONCLUSION
In this paper an approach of a lidar-based lane detection
system is presented which is capable to detect lane markings
as well as surrounding objects. First tests were performed on
public roads in free flowing traffic. The tests showed high
accordance with a state of the art video system choosed as a
reference. Even in situations of changing curvature the lidar
based approach showed only a slight delay revealing from
the lower distance of sight. However, the performed tests

’
n
underline the capability of the chosen sensor constellation to
3.2
be used for lane detection in near range. Combining object
-*o 200 400
3.1
a 200 400
and lane detection in a single sensor type it provides a very
Time Step Time Step interesting alternative for future assisting systems. Based on

-’.2r---l I this perception the next steps will be to do additional testing

on its capability to improve the environment detection in stop
& go traffic.
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Time Step Time Step name Fahrfunktionen von Krafifahrzeugen”, Dissertation Univenitar der
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Fig. IO. Road with Curvature Change (86 k m h ) [ - OLR - - LLD ] 131 B. Fardi. “Multi Modal Detection and Parameter-Based Tracking OF
Road Borders with a Lacer Scanner”, IEEE, 2003
[4] N. Furui, “Development of a Scanning Laser Radar for ACC”, IEEE,
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[5] BOSCH, “‘AdaptiveFahrgeschwindigkeitsregelung ACC”, Gelbe Reihe
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Looking at the curvature estimated by the LLD it can be Using MATLAB”, Canada: Wiley Interscience, 2001.
observed that it follows the OLR estimate with a small delay. [ 111 Invent, “www.invent-anline.de.’, (acc: l0/03/2CtO5).
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1131 “Richtlinie fur die Anlage von Strassen RAS-L Teil: Linienfiihrung”,
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the differing detection range are the main reasons for this
behaviour. However, the mean distance of both systems is
rather small (see Tab. 111).
R. Summary
Taking into account that both systems were running with
differing filter properties, the estimates of the’ LLD and the
OLR show a high accordance. As the LLD has a lower distance
of sight eSpeCkdlly its curvature estimate showed slight delays
towards the OLR. The mean distance of the lateral offset
estimate between OLR and LLD was never higher than 0.02 m.
The higher value for the lane width (0.09 m) is mainly caused
by the different filter dynamics, The difference of the angle
offset always stayed below 0.09’. The presented evaluation
of the LLD can riot be absolute since both systems deliver
estimates and not ground truth values. However, since both
systems deliver comparable results the capability of the LLD
to determine the lane’s shape is underlined.

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