Citation

McCarley JS, Krebs WK. Appl. Ergon. 2000; 31(5): 523-530.

Affiliation

Operations Research Department, Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, CA, USA. mccarley@uiuc.edu

Copyright

(Copyright © 2000, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

11059466

Abstract

Sensor fusion combines the output of multiple imaging sensors within a single composite display. Ideally, a fused image will retain important spatial information provided by individual input images, and will convey useful spatial or chromatic emergent information derived from the contrast between input images. The present experiment assessed the potential benefits of sensor fusion as a method of enhancing drivers' night-time detection of road hazards. Observers were asked to detect a pedestrian within thermal and visible images of a night-time scene, and within chromatic and achromatic renderings created by sensor fusion of grayscale thermal and visible images. Results indicated that fusion can both improve spatial image content, and can effectively embellish spatial content with emergent chromatic information. The benefits of both sensor fusion and of color rendering, however, were inconsistent, varying substantially with quality of input images submitted for fusion.

Language: en