A Parallel Pipeline Based Multiprocessor System For Real-Time Measurement of Road Traffic Parameters

R eal-time measurement and analysis of road trac ̄ow parameters such as volume, speed and queue are increasingly required for trac control and management. Image processing is considered as an attractive and ̄exible technique for automatic analysis of road trac scenes for the measurement and data collection of road trac parameters. In this paper, the authors describe a novel image processing based approach for analysis of road trac scenes. Combined background di€erencing and edge detection techniques are used to detect vehicles and measure various trac parameters such as vehicle count and the queue length. A RISC based multiprocessor system was designed to enable real-time execution of the authors algorithm. The multiprocessor system has nine processing modules connected in a parallel pipeline fashion. Results shows that the authors multiprocessor system is able to provide measurement of trac parameters in real-time. Results are presented for real tests of our system by analysing trac scenes on the highways of Singapore.