No abstract

In this paper, we present the adaptive bilateral filter (ABF) for sharpness enhancement and noise removal. The ABF sharpens an image by increasing the slope of the edges without producing overshoot or undershoot. It is an approach to sharpness enhancement that is fundamentally different from the unsharp mask (USM). This new approach to slope restoration also differs significantly from previous slope restoration algorithms in that the ABF does not involve detection of edges or their orientation, or extraction of edge profiles. In the ABF, the edge slope is enhanced by transforming the histogram via a range filter with adaptive offset and width. The ABF is able to smooth the noise, while enhancing edges and textures in the image. The parameters of the ABF are optimized with a training procedure. ABF restored images are significantly sharper than those restored by the bilateral filter. Compared with an USM based sharpening method-the optimal unsharp mask (OUM), ABF restored edges are as sharp as those rendered by the OUM, but without the halo artifacts that appear in the OUM restored image. In terms of noise removal, ABF also outperforms the bilateral filter and the OUM. We demonstrate that ABF works well for both natural images and text images.

Automotive surround view camera system is an emerging automotive ADAS (Advanced Driver Assistance System) technology that assists the driver in parking the vehicle safely by allowing him/her to see a top-down view of the 360 • surroundings of the vehicle. Such a system normally consists of four to six wide-angle (fish-eye lens) cameras mounted around the vehicle, each facing a different direction. From these camera inputs, a composite bird-eye view of the vehicle is synthesized and shown to the driver in real-time during parking. In this paper, we present a surround view camera solution that consists of three key algorithm components: geometric alignment, photometric alignment, and composite view synthesis. Our solution produces a seamlessly stitched bird-eye view of the vehicle from four cameras. It runs realtime on DSP C66x producing an 880 × 1080 output video at 30 fps.

Advance Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS), once limited to high end luxury automobiles are fast becoming popular with Mid and entry level segments driven in part by legislation coming in to effect in the latter part of this decade. These systems require support for a wide variety of applications, from surround-view visual systems to safety critical vision applications (eg Pedestrian Detect, automatic braking etc). In this white paper we describe some of the existing and emerging trends and applications in each of these segments along with the requirements and motivations for each of these features. We also highlight TI's automotive class TDA2x device, a state of the art automotive grade device capable of handling complex ADAS applications within a low power and cost budget.