Vehicle detection in far field of view of video sequences

Detection and tracking of vehicles from video and other image sequences are valuable in several traffic engineering application areas. Most of the research in this area has focused on detection of vehicles that are sufficiently large in the image that they can be detected on the basis of various features. As a result, the acquisition is feasible on limited sections of roads and may ignore significant parts of the available image. A method for early detection of vehicles was developed and demonstrated. This method focused on tracking motion rather than vehicle objects. With the detection of motion, the actual shape and size of the objects become less of a concern, thereby allowing detection of smaller objects at an earlier stage. One notable advantage that early detection offers is the ability to place cameras at higher vantage points or in oblique views that provide images in which vehicles in the near parts of the image can be detected by their shape or features, whereas vehicles in the far view cannot.