Application of Computer Vision Technologies to Intelligent Vehicles
A glimpse to our future transportation systems

Alberto Broggi
Dept. of Information Engineering
University of Parma
Parco Area delle Scienze 181A,
I-43100 Parma,  Italy
http://www.ce.unipr.it/broggi

Abstract:
The tutorial focuses on the current trends and possible future scenarios in the application of Information Technology, and in particular Computer Vision, on the vehicles of the future.
There is no doubt that information technologies are affecting our lives in many ways. Some applications are already well established and quite common, while some others are young and still under development, but nonetheless are showing a great potential. This is the case of on-board applications for the vehicle of the future:
vehicles will not only need to be comfortable, fast, and safe, but efficient and effective as well. Vehicles will be equipped with semi-automatic and fully-automatic features that will help the 'driver' in the driving task. Automatic route definition, autonomous driving, automatic recovery from dangerous conditions are just a few examples of how information technology can be of use in the personal transportation systems of tomorrow.
Vehicles able to move autonomously and navigate in everyday traffic, in both highway and urban scenarios, will become a reality in the next decades. Besides the obvious advantages of increasing road safety and improving the quality and efficiency of people and goods mobility, the integration of intelligent features and autonomous functionalities on vehicles will lead to major economical benefits such as reduction of fuel consumption, efficient exploitation of the road network, reduction of personnel. Furthermore, not only the automotive field (public transportation, trucks, and passengers cars) is interested in these new technologies, but other sectors as well, each with its own target (industrial vehicles, military systems, mission critical and unmanned rescue robots).
This very high level of automatization can be reached only once the most challenging problem in this area is solved: the perception of the environment surrounding the vehicle is, in fact, the main issue that is now regarded as
an extraordinary hot topic by all automotive industries and car manufacturers.
Perception, actuation, and -in a broader sense- automatization involvemany different aspects of information technology, including computer vision, robotics, artificial intelligence, signal processing, sensors, fusion,...
The tutorial will cover many aspects of intelligent vehicles and the enabling technologies and trends that are currently under study and development. The nature of the tutorial is descriptive and the level of detail can be adapted to the audience.
This course has been given to other international conferences in the last few years and has been improving along the years; it generally attracted large audiences.

Outline:
The tutorial tends to be very practical; formalism is reduced to a minimum, while great emphasis is given to the description of concepts with the help of figures and animations.
The approaches and techniques surveyed in this tutorial are applied to vehicles, but they are general and therefore valid also for other robotics fields (outdoor or indoor, partially structured or unknown environments). One of the examples will cover the well known DARPA Grand Challenge (www.grandchallenge.org)
The talk is divided as follows:
(1) introduction (45 min),
(2) presentation of requirements and techniques, (45 min)
(3) description of examples and discussion of current prototypes, (45 min)
(4) results of main projects (45 min).

Biography
Alberto Broggi is a professor of Computer Science at the University of Parma, Italy, and has been working in the field of application of Information Technologies on vehicles for 15 years. He is the Editor in Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS), and General Chair of the IEEE Intelligent Vehicles Symposium 2004.

Alberto Broggi received the Dr. Ing. (Master) degree in Electronic Engineering and the Ph.D. degree in Information Technology both from the Università di Parma, Italy, in 1990 and 1994, respectively. From 1994 to 1998, he was an Assistant Professor at the Dipartimento di Ingegneria dell'Informazione of the Università di Parma; from November 1998 to October 2001 he has been Associate Professor of Artificial Intelligence at the Dipartimento di Informatica e Sistemistica (Vision Laboratory) of the Università di Pavia, Italy. On November 2001 he joined again the Dipartimento di Ingegneria dell'Informazione of the Università di Parma as a Professor of Computer Science. In 2003 he got the recognition for Full Professorship in two distinct Universities. From 2000 to 2004 he has also been Visiting Professor at the Perception Systeme Information Lab. (PSI), Institut National des Sciences Appliquees (INSA) de Rouen, Rouen, France.
He is the author of more than 150 publications on international scientific journals, book chapters, refereed conference proceedings, and a book covering the whole ARGO Project; recently the book has also been translated in chinese.
Prof. Broggi is currently coordinating many projects with automotive industries (Volkswagen AG, FIAT Research Center, DamilerCrysler, VolvoTech) and governmental agencies (US Army, Regione Emilia-Romagna). Actively involved in the organization of scientific events, Prof. Broggi is on the Editorial Board and Program Committee of many international journals and conferences. He has been invited to give talks and tutorials and act as guest-editor of journals and magazines theme issues on topics related to Intelligent Vehicles, Computer Vision Application, and Computer Architectures for Real-Time Image Processing.
Prof. Broggi is the Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems (for the term 2004-2006), and is the Founding Editor of the Newsletter of the IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems Council (from 1999 to 2003); he acted as representative of the IEEE Computer Society on the same Council. He is the co-chair and co-founder of the Technical Committee on Intelligent Transportation Systems of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society. He has been the Editor of a regular Department on ITS on IEEE Intelligent Systems Magazine from 1999 to 2003.He acted as Program Chair of the IEEE Intelligent Vehicles Symposium,Detroit, 2000, and is the General Chair of the same Symposium in 2004,Parma, Italy.