Vehicular Flow Characterization: An Internet of Video Things-Based Solution

Abstract

Intelligent transportation systems (ITS) have emerged as the optimal solution to address urban mobility challenges. However, to effectively implement ITS, detailed traffic flow statistics are imperative. Various solutions have been proposed, including intrusive/non-intrusive sensors and compute vision-based solutions. However, these solutions have limitations in the number of measured traffic flow parameters, cost or performance under different traffic conditions. To overcome these limitations, we propose an Internet-of-Video-Things (IoVT) based solution. The sensor node (fabricated using Raspberry Pi Zero W, Pi camera, power bank, and Wi-Fi device) can live-streaming roadside traffic video to a remote Dell server located at our lab with Camlytics (commercially available traffic analysis software) installed. The proposed solution was field tested with a 45-minute live-streamed video of 720p at 25 frames per second. Results show that the proposed solution can measure more traffic flow parameters than intrusive and non-intrusive sensors, with an accuracy of 84.3% for vehicle count and speed estimation. Other parameters were also calculated, such as time/distance headway, spatial/temporal densities, heat maps, and trajectories. Additionally, the proposed solution can count pedestrians with an accuracy of 76.3%.