Traffic meteorological visibility estimation based on homogenous area extraction

Abstract

A novel technique for estimating traffic visibility based on homogenous area extraction is presented in this paper. Focusing on the problem of detecting daytime fog and estimating visibility, this proposed algorithm adopts a measure defined by the International Commission on Illumination CIE as the distance beyond which a black object of an appropriate dimension is perceived with a contrast of less than 5%. The key step for the algorithm is homogenous area extraction including sky and road selection from the top to the bottom of traffic image. Traffic meteorological visibility will be known as long as the inflection point's location of this area is found. Camera parameter calibration should be done by vanishing points calculation based on painted lines detection. At last, calibration results, inflection point and traffic meteorological visibility for three different traffic scenes will be given. Comparison with real data obtained manually verifies the effectiveness of the algorithm.