Motion estimation and tracking for urban traffic monitoring

The use of traac monitoring techniques based on image processing algorithms for supervising urban vehicle ows could be very useful. Classical inductive loops can only compute traac density on a single lane but are unable to estimate, for example, the behaviour of the vehicle ow at a crossroad. In this paper a system that estimates the turning rates at an urban crossroad by processing the sequence of images taken by a videocam-era is presented. Block matching motion estimation, segmentation, and moving objects tracking techniques are used. The good results obtained are presented and their relation to the camera position is discussed.