Multimedia traffic monitoring system

摘要

Incresing congestion on roads and highways, and the problems associated with conventional traffic monitoring systems have generated an interest in new traffic surveillance systems, such as video image processing. These systems are expected to be more effective and more conomical than conventional surveillance systems. In this paper, we describe the design of a traffic surveillance system, called Multimedial Traffic Monitoring System. The system is based is based on a client/server model, with u0006ollowing main modules: 1) video image capute module (VICM), 2) video image processing module (VIPM), and 3) database module (DBM). The VICM is used to caputre the live feed from a digital camera. Depending of the mode of the operation, VICM either: 1) sends the video images directly to the VIPM (on the same processing node), or 2) compresses the video images and sends them to the VIPM and/or the DBM on separate processing mode(s). The main contribution of this paper is the design of a traffic nonitoring system that uses image porocessing (VIPM) to estimate traffic flow. In the current implementation, VIPM estimates the number of venhicles per kilometer, while using 9 image sequensces (at a rate of 4 frames per second). The VIPM algorithm generates a virtual grid and superimposes it on a part of the traffic scene. Motion and vehicle detection operators are coarred out witin each cell in the grid. Vehicle count is conduced based on the 9 images of a sequence. The system is tested against a manual count of more than 40 image sequences (total of more than 365 traffic images) of various traffic situations. The results show that the system is able to determine the traffic flow with a precision of 1.5 vehicle per kilometer.