High performance pavement markings enhancing human, camera and lidar detection

Abstract

A Safe System Approach is built on several complementary safety layers provided by the car, the road infrastructure and improved driver behavior, through education or enforcement. Historically road markings and traffic signs have focused on the driver impact by human detection and making the infrastructure better visible in all weather and traffic situations. More recently the adaptation of the road to machine vision has become very relevant due to the developments in advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS) and autonomous vehicles (AV). Better road markings are required to improve the confidence of ADAS, and secondly to lay the base for higher levels of vehicle automation. The General Safety Regulation in the EU already mandates ADAS in new vehicle models. In 2024 all new registered vehicles need to be equipped with several ADAS, including Lane Keeping Assist (LKA) or Lane Departure Warning (LDW) systems. The human eyes and cameras are the sensors currently used have limitations in detecting road markings under certain conditions e.g., glare from sunlight or oncoming vehicles, rain, fog, low light nighttime conditions. All-weather performing (AW) tapes contain the latest developed high optics road markings, made of a mix of higher refractive index (R.I. mix 1,9 and 2,4) beads to provide reflectivity both in dry and wet condition when compared to the conventional (traditional) paint road markings with the optics of R.I 1,5 to 1,7 that perform mainly under dry conditions. This paper covers how better or improved road markings can influence both human and machine vision, with focus on camera and Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) sensors. It has been determined that high performance (RI>1,7) road markings help to increase the level of detection by both camera and LiDAR sensors, as well as human eyes. Particularly an All-Weather performing road marking tape was detected from significantly longer distances in wet and rainy conditions compared to traditional markings.