Vehicle Detection by Fusing Part Model Learning and Semantic Scene Information for Complex Urban Surveillance

• Main Authors: Yingfeng Cai, Ze Liu, Hai Wang, Xiaobo Chen, Long Chen
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2018-10-01
• Series: Sensors
• Subjects: Vehicle detection; traffic surveillance; deformable part model (DPM); conditional random field (CRF); context-based inference
• Online Access: http://www.mdpi.com/1424-8220/18/10/3505

Visual-based vehicle detection has been studied extensively, however there are great challenges in certain settings. To solve this problem, this paper proposes a probabilistic framework combining a scene model with a pattern recognition method for vehicle detection by a stationary camera. A semisupervised viewpoint inference method is proposed in which five viewpoints are defined. For a specific monitoring scene, the vehicle motion pattern corresponding to road structures is obtained by using trajectory clustering through an offline procedure. Then, the possible vehicle location and the probability distribution around the viewpoint in a fixed location are calculated. For each viewpoint, the vehicle model described by a deformable part model (DPM) and a conditional random field (CRF) is learned. Scores of root and parts and their spatial configuration generated by the DPM are used to learn the CRF model. The occlusion states of vehicles are defined based on the visibility of their parts and considered as latent variables in the CRF. In the online procedure, the output of the CRF, which is considered as an adjusted vehicle detection result compared with the DPM, is combined with the probability of the apparent viewpoint in a location to give the final vehicle detection result. Quantitative experiments under a variety of traffic conditions have been contrasted to test our method. The experimental results illustrate that our method performs well and is able to deal with various vehicle viewpoints and shapes effectively. In particular, our approach performs well in complex traffic conditions with vehicle occlusion.