Development of a portable traffic flow measurement system using image processing

Recent increase of traffic demand and development of information- and communication-intensive society generate a variety of complicated needs for traffic control systems. Conventionally ultrasonic vehicle detectors are mainly used to collect traffic data. Since they are installed at fixed points, however, they are not movable to measure traffic volume according to unexpected change of traffic conditions such as car accidents. Under such circumstances, a portable traffic flow measurement system using image processing was developed and evaluated in the field. This paper describes the hardware configuration of the measurement system, algorithm for vehicle counting, and evaluation results on accuracy of traffic flow measurement obtained in the field test.