Traffic Flow Measurement by Analyzing the Brightness Distribution of TV Image

Abstract

Since the number of automobiles has been increasing every year, it has become important to analyze traffic jam in recent years. If the problem like traffic jam can be solved, pollutions will be removed and the burden imposed on drivers will be lightened.
As the examples of traffic flow measurement, there are the methods of using loop-coil sensors or ultrasonic wave sensors. These methods have some disadvantages that construction of equipment become large-scale, expenses piles up and measurement points are fixed. They are not useful for traffic flow survey. By way of another method, though there is the method by manpower, it is difficult to measure such as distinction of the type of an automobile, and it is inferior in accuracy in long time measurement.
We consider constructing the real-time processing system of traffic flow measurement using a TV camera that is a general purpose use. The system consists of a handy TV camera, a personal computer, and a usual image processor system. We employed the method of using spatial frequency analysis of video picture plane to traffic flow measurement. This method has advantage of noise margin by employment of integral operation to calculate Fourier coefficients.