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Deep learning based approaches for object detection are heavily dependent on the nature of data used for training, especially for vehicles driving in cluttered urban environments. Consequently, the performance of Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) architectures designed and trained using data captured under clear weather and favorable conditions, could degrade rather significantly when tested under cloudy and rainy conditions. This naturally becomes a major safety issue for emerging autonomous vehicle platforms relying on CNN based object detection methods. Furthermore, despite a noticeable progress in the development of advanced visual deraining algorithms, they still have inherent limitations for improving the performance of state-of-the-art object detection. In this paper, we address this problem area by make the following contributions.

The development of connected-vehicle technology, which includes vehicle-vehicle and vehicle-infrastructure communications, opens the door for unprecedented active safety and driver-enhanced systems. In addition to exchanging basic traffic messages among vehicles for safety applications, a significantly higher level of safety can be achieved when vehicles and designated infrastructure-locations share their sensor data. In this paper, we propose a new system where cameras installed on multiple vehicles and infrastructure-locations share and fuse their visual data and detected objects in real-time. The transmission of camera data and/or detected objects (e.g., pedestrians, vehicles, cyclists, etc.) can be accomplished by many communication methods. In particular, such communications can be accomplished using the emerging Dedicated Short-Range Communications (DSRC) technology.