Extracting Traffic Parameters at Intersections Through Computer Vision

A vision-based system for extracting important traffic parameters such as vehicle count, density, type and location at a three-way junction is presented. A single digital camera is used to acquire the video clip at the junction. In order to cover a wide area of the junction and to minimize the occlusion of vehicles, the camera is placed on top of a building near the junction. The accuracy of the system in vehicle counting is 91% and that of vehicle classification is 89% for small, medium and large vehicles. The errors in vehicle counting and classification occur mainly due to the occlusion of the moving vehicles. Errors also increase when the distance from the camera to the moving vehicle is high. Many of the problems in real-time implementation can be avoided to a great extent by using a multi camera system that can cover a large field of view.