This module introduces the main concepts from the broad field of computer vision needed to progress through perception methods for self-driving vehicles. The main components include camera models and their calibration, monocular and stereo vision, projective geometry, and convolution operations.

Visual features are used to track motion through an environment and to recognize places in a map. This module describes how features can be detected and tracked through a sequence of images and fused with other sources for localization as described in Course 2. Feature extraction is also fundamental to object detection and semantic segmentation in deep networks, and this module introduces some of the feature detection methods employed in that context as well.

Deep learning is a core enabling technology for self-driving perception. This module briefly introduces the core concepts employed in modern convolutional neural networks, with an emphasis on methods that have been proven to be effective for tasks such as object detection and semantic segmentation. Basic network architectures, common components and helpful tools for constructing and training networks are described.

The two most prevalent applications of deep neural networks to self-driving are object detection, including pedestrian, cyclists and vehicles, and semantic segmentation, which associates image pixels with useful labels such as sign, light, curb, road, vehicle etc. This module presents baseline techniques for object detection and the following module introduce semantic segmentation, both of which can be used to create a complete self-driving car perception pipeline.

The second most prevalent application of deep neural networks to self-driving is semantic segmentation, which associates image pixels with useful labels such as sign, light, curb, road, vehicle etc. The main use for segmentation is to identify the drivable surface, which aids in ground plane estimation, object detection and lane boundary assessment. Segmentation labels are also being directly integrated into object detection as pixel masks, for static objects such as signs, lights and lanes, and moving objects such cars, trucks, bicycles and pedestrians.

The final module of this course focuses on the implementation of a collision warning system that alerts a self-driving car about the position and category of obstacles present in their lane. The project is comprised of three major segments: 1) Estimating the drivable space in 3D, 2) Semantic Lane Estimation and 3) Filter wrong output from object detection using semantic segmentation.