Robust classification and tracking of vehicles in traffic video streams

The widespread use of cameras for traffic monitoring coupled with the availability of robust tracking algorithms has led to volumes of data. It is necessary to process this data for higher level tasks. One of these processing tasks is vehicle type classification, which can be used in a query based management system. This paper presents a tracking system with the ability to classify vehicles into three classes {sedan, semi, truck+SUV+van}. This system was developed after comparing classification schemes using both vehicle images and measurements. The most accurate of these learned classifiers was integrated into tracking software. This merging of classification and tracking greatly improved the accuracy on low resolution traffic video