A FLEXIBLE CONCEPT FOR TRAFFIC OBSERVATION, ANALYSIS AND CLASSIFICATION WITH A STEREO CAMERA SYSTEM
Werner Poechmueller, H-H Kuester, A Heiner, D Raproeger · Intelligent Transportation: Realizing the Future. Abstracts of the Third World Congress on Intelligent Transport SystemsITS America · 1996
This paper will present an alternative approach to videobased traffic measurement systems based on the evaluation of image sequences from a stereo camera pair. Videobased traffic measurement has two main advantages over conventional based systems: 1. It is a nonintrusive measurement which neither needs road construction nor traffic blocking for installation or service. 2. It can provide an operator with a view of the observed traffic scene on demand. The second advantage even holds against other nonintrusive measurement methods like radar based systems and laser based systems. In a critical situation, e.g. a blocked road, it will be very valuable to have the possibility of a visual verification through an operator who might get some information about the cause of the problem (accident, heavy fog) to start the necessary actions. Existing videobased traffic measurement systems can be separated into two classes: 1. Traffic parameter measurement - the aim is to extract parameters describing the traffic flow, e.g. average speed per lane, average occupancy per lane, number of vehicles per class and lane; 2. Incident detection - the aim is to detect abnormalities in the traffic flow, e.g. stationary obstacles and traffic jams.