Vehicle Speed Detection and Identification from a Single Motion Blurred Image

Motion blur is a result of finite acquisition time of practical cameras and the relative motion between the camera and moving objects. Traditionally, the image degradations caused by motion blur are treated as undesirable artifacts and usually have to be removed before further processing. In this work, we propose a novel approach for vehicle speed detection based on a single motion blurred image as opposed to the most commonly used RADAR and LIDAR devices for traffic law enforcement. The motion blur parameters are estimated from a single motion blurred image and the length of motion blur is used for image restoration. The restored image is then used to obtain other parameters for vehicle speed estimation. The images taken with the vehicle´s license plates are used for both the assistance of image restoration and the identification of the vehicle. We have established a link between the motion blur information of a 2D image and the speed information of a moving object. Experiments have shown the results of less than 2% error for both local and highway traffic compared to video-based speed estimation methods