Austrian Research Centers - Traffic Data Acquisition and Video Surveillance

Austrian Research Centers' smart systems teams have dedicated their work to the innovation of smart real-time systems: all-in-one-solutions for systems with ICT-based intelligence, which support human users in many areas of life and various fields of applications; systems which offer safety, security and comfort, provide information, and enable open systems interconnection.

Our core competences are dependable signal and data processing on chip, in embedded systems and on computer systems; simulation techniques and measurement; and test engineering. Smart Systems offers:

• Smart Eye TDS – traffic data sensor for acquisition of vehicle volume, speed, class and lane occupancy
• Smart Eye UCOS – universal counting sensor for reliable and compact over-head people counting
• Smart Video Surveillance Suite (SVSS) – for encoding, decoding, recording and storing video sequences

SMART EYE TDS – TRAFFIC DATA SENSOR

The Smart Eye traffic data sensor is a new road sensor, which is dedicated to analyse traffic conditions simultaneously on up to four lanes, providing real-time data for traffic management systems. As an embedded vision system, Smart Eye autonomously determines the input parameters for traffic management systems. It delivers single vehicle data and statistic information at two configurable time intervals:

• Time stamp and lane number
• Vehicle speed, class, length and separation
• Vehicle volumes
• Average speeds for each class and lane
• Lane occupancy

In addition, the intelligent sensor extracts parameters that are typical for the early stages of a traffic jam and furthermore classifies vehicles into two categories. The sensor offers a wide variety of connectivity; the traffic data is transferred via serial (RS485), Ethernet or GSM / GPRS connection.

HIGH-SPEED VISION SYSTEM

The response time of the vision chip is far below 1ms, outperforming most of today's high-speed vision systems. This allows a robust detection and speed estimation for fast-moving objects such as vehicles on the road. At the same time it allows a much simpler system architecture leading to noticeably lower costs.

The sensor operates largely independent of scene illumination, directly encodes object reflectance, and greatly reduces redundancy while preserving precise timing information. With its high dynamic range of 120dB robust-vehicles detection is achieved even at variable and difficult lighting conditions.

POSITIONING THE SENSOR

In contrast to many other non-video based traffic data acquisition systems, the sensor has a high degree of freedom regarding its mounting position. The complete processing unit is incorporated into the camera housing, so only one single unit needs to be installed.

A true remote configuration of the sensor detection zones ('virtual' loops) is possible through a graphical user interface via Ethernet connection, minimising installation and maintenance costs. A driver for Microsoft® Windows XP to import traffic data in real-time into SQL and Microsoft® Access databases is available.

SMART EYE UCOS – UNIVERSAL COUNTING SENSOR

The Smart Eye UCOS represents a new approach for people counting, which is based on novel CMOS-technology. Combining unique intrinsic characteristics of a novel intelligent optical sensor with stereoscopic vision, our product ensures a highly accurate person counting, which is fully independent of any kind of environmental influences, such as bad light conditions, occurrence of shadows, static decoration objects or temperature changes.

It is a compact 'all-in-one' solution integrating all functionalities in a single device, and represents an optimal solution for people-counting applications in retail stores, shopping-malls, public buildings or exhibition halls.

SMART VIDEO SURVEILLANCE SUITE (SVSS)

The SVSS is a freely configurable system consisting of hardware and software components for encoding (MPEG4, H.264), decoding, recording, storing and replaying video sequences within computer networks. Additionally it includes image analysis modules (embedded and on PC) that performs vehicle and people detection and tracking for various applications in traffic surveillance.