A WiFi-based method to count and locate pedestrians in urban traffic scenarios

Abstract

Estimating the number of people in a given environment is an attractive tool with a wide range of applications. Urban environments are not an exception. Counting pedestrians and locate them properly in a road traffic scenario can facilitate the design of intelligent systems for traffic control that take into account more actors and not only vehicle-based optimizations. In this work, we present a new WiFi-based passive method to estimate the number of pedestrians in an urban traffic scenario formed by signaled intersections. Particularly, we are able i) to distinguish between pedestrians walking and pedestrians waiting in a pedestrian crossing and ii) to estimate the exact location where static pedestrians are waiting to cross. By doing so, the pedestrian factor could be included in intelligent control management systems for traffic optimization in real time. The performance analysis carried out shows that our method is able to achieve a significant level of accuracy while presenting an easy implementation.