Vehicle Detection and Shape Recognition Using Optical Sensors: A Review

Optical systems are well suited for traffic observation and management. The real-time requirements can be met by implementation of appropriate image processing algorithms in hardware. Being one of the most important applications of optical sensors, vision-based vehicle detection and shape recognition for collecting information about road congestion, for driver assistance and for providing information for future development of roads has received considerable attention over the last one-two decades. There are many reasons for the intense research in this field including security requirements in the countries, the increased number of road accidents, the increased number of vehicles on the roads and the availability of feasible computer technologies that has brought a tremendous progress for computer vision research. This paper provides a critical survey of recent vision based road vehicle detection and shape recognition systems appeared in the literature.