Visual road traffic monitoring and data collection

The application of a parallel image processing system used for traffic monitoring is discussed. It is based on a multi-transputer system. The task of segmenting video images of a traffic scene is achieved by configuring a number of hardware modules to perform temporal smoothing, image differencing and thresholding. Feature extraction, motion prediction and brightness computation are assigned to a number of transputer framestores. Four lanes/entries can be monitored in real time using a total of six framestore units and three hardware video processing modules. The full system configuration is outlined and the hardware is described. Some results of monitoring motorway traffic and tracking vehicles in a four-arm junction are discussed.