This report summarizes the research behind a real-time system for vehicle detection and classification in images of traffic obtained by a stationary CCD camera. The system models vehicles as rectangular bodies with appropriate dynamic behavior and processes images on three levels: raw image, blob, and vehicle. Correspondence is calculated between the processing levels as the vehicles move through the scene. This report also presents a new calibration algorithm for the camera. Implemented on a dual Pentium PC equipped with a Matrox Genesis C80 video processing board, the system performed detection and classification at a frame rate of 15 frames per second. Detection accuracy approached 95%, and classification of those detected vehicles neared 65%. The report includes an analysis of scenes from highway traffic to demonstrate this application.
