Robust Glare Detection: Review, Analysis, and Dataset Release

Abstract

Sun Glare widely exists in the images captured by unmanned ground and aerial vehicles performing in outdoor environments. The existence of such artifacts in images will result in wrong feature extraction and failure of autonomous systems. Humans will try to adapt their view once they observe a glare (especially when driving), and this behavior is an essential requirement for the next generation of autonomous vehicles. The source of glare is not limited to the sun, and glare can be seen in the images captured during the nighttime and in indoor environments, which is due to the presence of different light sources; reflective surfaces also influence the generation of such artifacts. The glare's visual characteristics are different on images captured by various cameras and depend on several factors such as the camera's shutter speed and exposure level. Hence, it is challenging to introduce a general - robust and accurate - algorithm for glare detection that can perform well in various captured images. This research aims to introduce the first dataset for glare detection, which includes images captured by different cameras. Besides, the effect of multiple image representations and their combination in glare detection is examined using the proposed deep network architecture. The released dataset is available at https://github.com/maesfahani/glaredetection