Improvements to vehicular traffic segmentation and classification for emissions estimation using networked traffic surveillance cameras

Abstract

The goal of this intelligent transportation systems work is to improve the understanding of the impact of carbon emissions caused by vehicular traffic on highway systems. In order to achieve this goal, this work implements a pipeline for vehicle segmentation, feature extraction, and classification using the existing Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) infrastructure on networked traffic cameras. The VDOT traffic video is analyzed for vehicle detection and segmentation using an adaptive Gaussian mixture model algorithm. The morphological properties and histogram of oriented features are derived from the detected and segmented vehicles. Finally, vehicle classification is performed using a multiclass support vector machine classifier. The resulting classification scheme offers an average classification rate of 86% under good quality segmentation. The segmented vehicle and classification data can be used to obtain estimation of carbon emissions.