Andre Justus, "Nutzung der Tiefeninformationen eines Lasersensors zur Erweiterung einer Fahrspuridentifikation fuer ein Fahrerassistenzsystem", 2009.

In new vehicles, increasingly more advanced driver assistance systems (ADASs) have been incorporated in order to assist the driver in dangerous situations. Through warnings and interventions, ADASs increase the safety of the driver and others using the road. At the moment, mainly cameras and radar sensors are used in ADASs for sensing the environment. Laser sensors may also be used and present an advantage to radar in that they can detect slow moving and stationary objects like parked cars and pedestrians. They are, however more expensive and for this reason not yet utilized in production use. In the future it is likely that they will be used instead of or in combination with radar sensors. This thesis discusses how a camera-based ADAS for recognizing drivable area may be improved by the use of laser sensors. A system is established that recognizes obstacles by the use of laser sensors and builds up an obstacle map. It is shown that low obstacles, in particular curbstones are difficult to detect using the given laser sensors. The feasibility of a curbstone detection by the use of laser sensors in combination with camera data is analyzed in detail. The evaluation shows that obstacle detection via laser sensors works well for higher obstacles, but is less than optimal for curbstone detection due to characteristics of the used laser sensor.