The invention relates to a video-Doppler-radar traffic surveillance system.
(1) Doppler Radar Based Traffic Surveillance Systems:
A traditional radar based traffic surveillance system uses a Doppler radar for vehicle speed monitoring which measures a vehicle speed at line-of-sight (LOS). In
where K is a Doppler frequency conversion constant. Although a Doppler radar based system has an advantage of a long detection range, there are several difficulties associated with the traditional radar based system, including (1) the Doppler radar beam angle is too large to precisely locate vehicles within the radar beam; (2) the angle between the vehicle moving direction and the LOS, φt, is unknown and therefore, needs to be small enough for a reasonable speed estimation accuracy; (3) since all velocity vectors on the equal-Doppler cone in
(2) Video Camera Based Traffic Surveillance Systems:
A video camera based traffic surveillance system uses a video camera to capture a traffic scene and relies on computer vision techniques to indirectly calculate vehicle speeds. Precise vehicle locations can be identified. However, since no direct speed measurements are available and the camera has a finite number of pixels, the video camera based traffic surveillance system can be used only in a short distance application.
This invention combines the both a Doppler radar based system and the video based system into a traffic surveillance system to preserve the advantages of both systems and overcome the shortcomings of both systems.
A video-Doppler-radar traffic surveillance system to monitor traffic may include a first movable Doppler radar moving along a first radar motion ray to measure a relative speed of a moving vehicle with respect to the first movable Doppler radar, a second movable Doppler radar moving along a second radar motion ray to measure a relative speed of the moving vehicle with respect to the second movable Doppler radar, a stationary Doppler radar to measure an absolute speed of the moving vehicle with respect to the stationary Doppler radar, a stationary video camera to measure the location of the moving vehicle on its image plane which is intersected by the first and second radar motion rays, a data processing device to process Doppler radar and video information, and a recording device to continuously record the complete information of the moving vehicle.
The surveillance system may register the first movable radar and the second movable radar with the video camera by locating the intersections of the first and second movable radar motion rays with the video camera image plane.
The surveillance system may calculate the radar-based angle of a moving vehicle from two movable Doppler Radars.
The surveillance system may calculate the video-based angle of a moving vehicle on its image plane.
The surveillance system may register the angle of a moving vehicle on its image plane to the angle of a moving vehicle from two movable Doppler radars and register the absolute speed of the moving vehicle to the image plane location.
The surveillance system may record the moving vehicle information onto a data recording device.
The invention may be understood by reference to the following description taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings, in which, like reference numerals identify like elements, and in which:
While the term “traffic surveillance” is used herein, it may also refer to other traffic applications, such as “traffic monitoring”, etc. The term “video camera” may refer to “any image device” which may generate any electro-optical or thermal or hyper-spectral images. The term “video” may refer to single or multiple images taken over time. The invention discussed here may be applied to the cases of multiple video cameras and more than three radars.
1. System Setup Description
A video-Doppler-radar traffic surveillance system is shown in
2. Doppler Signals from Doppler Radars
The first and second movable Doppler radars 11, 12 may provide the relative Doppler signals of a moving vehicle on a roadway with respect to the first and second movable Doppler radars (11 and 12 in
f
D
1
=K
1
[v
t cos(φt)+vr
and
f
D
2
=K
2
[v
t cos(φt)+vr
where vr
The stationary Doppler radar 13 may provide the absolute Doppler signal of the moving vehicle 10 via
f
D
3
=K
3
v
t cos(φt) (4)
where K3 is the Doppler conversion constant for the stationary Doppler radar (13 in
3. Vehicle Speeds from Doppler Signals
The estimators for Doppler signal processing in the Data processing Unit (15 in
and may calculate the absolute radial speed of the moving vehicle 10 with respect to the stationary Doppler radar 13 as
4. Radar-Based Angle Calculation
The estimators for Doppler signal processing may calculate the differences of the relative speeds and the absolution speed
v
t
13
=v
n
1
−v
t
3
=v
r1 cos(θr1) (8)
and
v
t
23
=v
n
2
−v
t
3
=v
r1 cos(θr2) (9)
and may calculate the ratio of the speed differences
The scaled speed vector 17 along the movable Doppler radar motion ray (either 4 or 5 in
and a unit vector, n (18 in
5. Video-based Angle Calculation
A camera imaging geometry is shown in
6. Registering Moving Vehicle Speed to Image Plane
A moving vehicle 10 with a radar-based angle α 19 and a moving vehicle 10 with a video-based angle β 21 may be considered to be a same vehicle if
|α−β|<γ (13)
where γ is a pre-defined threshold. The absolute radial speed of the moving vehicle 10 vt3 calculated in Eq. (7) is then registered to the vehicle's image location on the image plane (9 in
The vehicle's location and the registered speed may be then recorded in the data recording device (16 in