ScanTraffic: Smart Camera Network for Traffic Information Collection

Intelligent Transport Systems (ITSs) are gaining growing interest from governments and research communities because of the economic, social and environmental benefits they can provide. An open issue in this domain is the need for pervasive technologies to collect trafficrelated data. In this paper we discuss the use of visual Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs), i.e., networks of tiny smart cameras, to address this problem. We believe that smart cameras have many advantages over classic sensor motes. Nevertheless, we argue that a specific software infrastructure is needed to fully exploit them. We identify the three main services such software must provide, i.e., monitoring, remote configuration, and remote code-update, and we propose a modular architecture for them. We discuss our implementation of such architecture, called ScanTraffic, and we test its effectiveness within an ITS prototype we deployed at the Pisa International Airport. We show how ScanTraffic greatly simplifies the deployment and management of smart cameras collecting information about traffic flow and parking lot occupancy.