An Optical Information System for Road Traffic Measurement and Management

OIS is a new Optical Information System for road traffic observation and management. The complete system architecture from the sensor for automatic traffic detection up to the traffic light management for a wide area is designed under the requirements of an intelligent transportation system. Particular features of this system are the vision sensors with integrated computational and real-time capabilities, real-time algorithms for image processing and a new approach for dynamic traffic light management for a single intersection as well as for a wide area. The developed real-time algorithms for image processing extract traffic data even at night and under bad weather conditions. This approach opens the opportunity to identify and specify each traffic object, its location, its speed and other important object information. Furthermore the algorithms are able to identify accidents, and non-motorized traffic like pedestrians and bicyclists. Combining all these single information the system creates new derivate and consolidated information. This leads to a new and more complete view on the traffic situation of an intersection. Only by this a dynamic and near real-time traffic light management is possible. To optimize a wide area traffic management it is necessary to improve the modelling and forecasting of traffic flow. Therefore the information of the current Origin-Destination (OD) flow is essentially. Taking this into account OIS also includes an approach for anonymous vehicle recognition. This approach is based on single object characteristics, order of objects and forecast information, which will be obtained from intersection to intersection.