Pedestrian crossing detection based on evidential fusion of video-sensors

This paper introduces an online pedestrian crossing detection system that uses pre-existing traffic-oriented video-sensors which, at regular intervals, provide coarse spatial measurements on areas along a crosswalk. Pedestrian crossing detection is based on the recognition of occupancy patterns induced by pedestrians when they move on the crosswalk. In order to improve the ability of non-dedicated sensors to detect pedestrians, we introduce an evidential-based data fusion process that exploits redundant information coming from one or two sensors: intra-sensor fusion uses spatiotemporal characteristics of the measurements and inter-sensor fusion uses redundancy between the two sensors. As part of the EU funded TRACKSS project on cooperative advanced sensors for road traffic applications, real data have been collected on an urban intersection equipped with two cameras. The results obtained show that the data fusion process enhances the quality of occupancy patterns obtained and leads to high detection rates of pedestrian crossings with multi-purpose sensors in operational conditions, especially when a secondary sensor is available.