Night Time Vehicle Detection for Real Time Traffic Monitoring Systems: A Review
Keerthana Gunasekaran, S Padmavathi · 2014
Real time traffic surveillance using computer vision system is an emerging research area. Many new algorithms are being developed to perform the surveillance in the most effective manner. The first and critical step in these road traffic monitoring systems is to detect and track the vehicles. In this paper, we provide a brief review on the night time vehicle detection techniques that have been used in the recent years. The detection of vehicles in the night time can prove to be challenging because the usual features of the vehicles like the vehicle shadows, horizontal and vertical edges that helps in the identification in day time cannot be used during the night time. The only salient features that are visible in the night time are headlights, rear-lights and their beams, street-lamps, horizontal signals such as zebra crossings and traffic scenes with reflectors. Thus, in night time surveillance the target objects are the vehicle headlights and rear lights.