Detecting road user actions in traffic intersections using RGB and thermal video

This paper investigates the development of a watch-dog system that detects a subset of road user actions in traffic intersections. Footage of the intersections is captured with RGB and thermal cameras to ensure that the road is visible round-the-clock even in difficult weather conditions. The watch-dog system consists of several, cascaded detectors which are capable of detecting specific road user actions, such as Right Turning Vehicles, Left Turning Vehicles, and Straight Going Cyclists. Experimental results on 4 hours of video from 3 different intersections show good performance and a precision above 0.93 when detecting turning vehicles. The use of both RGB and thermal video generally results in better performance, providing overall stability when observing the road.