Dynamic camera calibration of roadside traffic management cameras for vehicle speed estimation

In this paper, we present a new three-stage algorithm to calibrate roadside traffic management cameras and track vehicles to create a traffic speed sensor. The algorithm first estimates the camera position relative to the roadway using the motion and edges of the vehicles. Given the camera position, the algorithm then calibrates the camera by estimating the lane boundaries and the vanishing point of the lines along the roadway. The algorithm transforms the image coordinates from the vehicle tracker into real-world coordinates using our simplified camera model. We present results that demonstrate the ability of our algorithm to produce good estimates of the mean vehicle speed in a lane of traffic.