Traffic data collection from aerial imagery

This paper describes a new data collection system prototype for determining individual vehicle trajectories from sequences of digital aerial images. The software was tested on data collected from a helicopter, using a digital camera gathering high-resolution monochrome images. From the test, it is concluded that the techniques for analyzing the digital images can be applied automatically without much problems: 98% of the vehicles could be detected and tracked automatically when conditions were reasonable; this number lowered to 90% after the weather conditions worsened. This percentage will increase substantially under better weather conditions. Furthermore, equipment stabilizing the camera-so-called gyroscopic mounting-and the use of color images can be applied to further improve the system.