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ABSTRACT
A video-based system for traffic monitoring (e.g. on highways
or near crossroads) is presented. The objective of the system is
to set up a high-level description of the traffic scene,
comprising the position, speed and class of vehicles in a range
of view between 0 and about 100 meters. The algorithms run
in real-time on a low-cost system (386-PC with a DSP plug-in
board).
INTRODUCTION
Todays road traffic demands more efficient and intelligent
management and control strategies. As a prerequisite, online traffic data acquisition is necessary. Typical
requirements a r e [81:
- wide range ofview of a t least lOOm should be monitored,
- vehicles should be counted, tracked and classified,
- the speed and position of each vehicle should be reported
rather exactly.
Conventional techniques (e.g. inductive loop) cannot provide
these data, if costs have to be kept within reasonable limits.
In this paper a video nsed traffic monitoring system IS
presented. Several other authors ([41,[51,~61.[71.[81in Europe
and some others in Japan) have presented similar work, but
have not fully met the above requirements. No system is able
to track and classify multiple vehicles in real-time with high
resolution and without using special dedicated hardware.
This work shows that real-time traffic monitoring is possible
even with general-purpose hardware.
A series of problems has to be addressed:
- great variability of the possible scenes,
- partial occlusion of vehicles in heavy traffic conditions,
- difficult illumination conditions,
- real-time processing,
- cost aspects.
On the other hand, the envisioned application allows to take
advantage of a couple of assumptions:
- only objects, which are moving or have been moving in the
past have to be registered,
- the movement of the vehicles can be modelled using
simple physical laws,
- the shape of the vehicles can be modelled using simple
geometric models.
- only part of the image (the traffic region) is of interest.
Q
image sequence
cluster resolution
25
ri
object list
tracking
track list
classification
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current position,
predicted position for the next image frame,
- current speed,
- predicted speed for the nest image frame,
- width,
- plausibility.
The tracking algorithm comprises the following subtasks:
- Assign detected moving objects to existing tracks:
-
Tracking
The main task of the tracking algorithm is to track the
detected objects and to predict their respective positions in
the next image frame. In the track list, the whole description
of the scene is stored. Each track has the following attributes:
Classification
The vehicles have to be classified according to:
- trucks,
- cars,
- motorcyles. bicycles.
The selection of the features best suited for the classification
depends on the situation. If the vehicle is moving towards the
camera, the first feature to evaluate is the width of the
bounding box. This width is tracked over the sequence and an
estimation over several frames is made.
If a rotation of the vehicle is detected by the tracking
algorithm, the leading edge is used as suitable feature. This
leading edge again is tracked over several frames and an
estimation of the width is made. This predicted position is
used for feature tracking.
Another useful feature to evaluate is the height of the
bounding box. These measurements are filtered with a
Kalman-filter and the length and height of the vehicle are
calculated.
IMPLEMENTATION
The following input format turns out to be appropriate:
- resolution: 256 x 256 pixel
- grey levels: 8 bit
- frame rate: 8 1i3 Hz
The algorithms were first implemented and tested on a SUN
Sparcstation 1.
Real-time processing is now done on a personal computer (PC)
with an Intel i386 processor a s host, a digital signal processor
(Motorola DSP96002) plug-in board and a frame grabber. The
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