Camera Based Measurement of Side Slip Angle in an Automobile

Abstract

For vehicle dynamics applications, automotive companies are interested in determining the precise vehicle state in every driving situation in real-time. Part of the vehicle state is the side slip angle—the angle between the vehicle heading and its direction of movement. Currently the side slip angle is not measured in stock cars. To fill the gap this paper presents a basic proof of concept to measure the side slip angle using stock car components for sensing. These include an automotive camera and additional movement information provided in current production passenger cars. A basic computer vision algorithm allows determination of camera movement through the identification of static objects in consecutive camera images. In conjunction with a kinematical model, this data is then used to derive the car’s side slip angle. Finally, the method is evaluated on a real vehicle, with dGPS providing ground truth.