Real time camera-based sideslip angle estimation: Design and experiments

Vehicle stability controllers and car modeling significantly rely on the knowledge of the vehicle velocity and sideslip angle, i.e. the angle between the velocity vector and the vehicle's heading. While various estimation techniques have been proposed over time, their reliability across generic driving scenarios remains unsatisfactory. This study investigates a novel methodology to directly measure velocity and sideslip angle, using computer vision techniques. A real-time sensing framework is put in place on a full-scale passenger vehicle, with the camera setup allowing to send signals over the vehicle Controller Area Network (CAN). Experiments, along several manoeuvres, confirm the real-time applicability and effectiveness of the proposed approach against the state-of-the-art sensor Kistler S-Motion (ground truth).