TRAFFIC MONITORING: Optical

sensing system improves traffic-

flow evaluation

By
SHRUTHI KOMAL GUDIPATI
 Why Optical Systems?
• Traffic-data measurement systems often
used today are induction loops embedded
in the pavement and the so-called floating-
car-data technique

• Optical systems can overcome these

limitations

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 Continued. . .
• The variety of optical sensors offers
greater flexibility in system development
and application

• several cameras can be installed at

multiple locations to compensate for
occlusions

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 Continued. . .
• able to observe and analyze local and
wide-area traffic and automatically
generate traffic data

• image sequences acquired by these

systems can be used to track all the
objects that take part in the traffic flow

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 The Institute of Computer Science
at the Humboldt-Universität zu
Berlin (Germany)

• testing an integrated optical system for

image analysis in traffic monitoring in
conjunction with the German Aerospace
Center

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 Their Goal

• develop algorithms for characterizing

traffic patterns that can be implemented in
programmable logic arrays or in digital
signal processors in the camera system
itself to support real-time signal
processing

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 System Requirements

• be able to acquire and evaluate traffic

image sequences at intersections and
along lanes or roads

• has to work continuously and reliably

• sensor-data fusion
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 Hardware and software
components

• mechanical and optical components, an

image-acquisition system, a hardware-
based image-processing unit, and image-
processing software implemented in a
standard microprocessor

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An integrated optical system

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 Components of the system
• mechanical and optical components

• an image-acquisition system

• a hardware-based image-processing unit

• an image-processing software
implemented in a standard
microprocessor
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 FPGA
• a high degree of parallelism

• a flexible structure

• low clock frequency

• low power loss

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 Sensor-data fusion
• Need to know the spatial relationship between
the camera sensors

• One kind of fusion -- RANSAC or Random

Sample Consensus

• Another approach involves augmenting the VIS

spectral range of observation by adding a
thermal-infrared (TIR) sensor to the system
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Using epipolar geometry. . .

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 Another Problem
• the issue of calculating amounts for
characterizing traffic flow--the so-called
"traffic active area."

• invisible routes that are the optimal

connections between their points of
interest, subconsciously chosen in the
same way by most individuals
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Movement of pedestrians

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 REFERENCES
• 1. R.D. Kühne, R.-P. Schäfer, J. Mikat, K.-U. Thiessenhusen, U. Böttger,
and S. Lorkowski, Proc. 10th IFAC (Int'l. Fed. of Automatic Control) Symp.
on Control in Transportation Systems, Tokyo, Japan (2003).
2. S. Lorkowski, P. Mieth, R.-P. Schäfer, CTRI Young Researcher Seminar,
Den Haag (NL), Nov. 11-13, 2005.
3. Xilinx Corp.
www.xilinx.com/publications/xcellonline/partners/xc_pdf/xc_nuvation43.pdf.
2005
4. Z. Zhang, Int'l. J. Computer Vision 27, 2, 161, Kluwer Academic
Publishers, Boston (1998).
•
BEATE MEFFERT is head of the signal-processing and pattern-recognition
group at the Institute of Computer Science, Humboldt-Universitaet zu Berlin;
ROMAN BLASCHEK and UWE KNAUER are graduate students at
Humboldt-Universitaet zu Berlin, Unter den Linden 6, 10099 Berlin,
Germany; e-mail meffert@informatik.hu-berlin.de.

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