Vehicles overtaking detection using RGB-D data

• A robust vehicle tracking algorithm is proposed by utilizing RGB-D cameras.
• Better semantic understanding of vehicles overtaking is achieved by depth data.
• An efficient vehicle tracking algorithm for overtaking judgment is implemented.

Outstanding breakthrough in traffic video surveillance has been made with the development of computer vision techniques. However, there are still some problems to be solved due to the limitations of two-dimensional (2D) video data. With the popularity of three-dimensional (3D) cameras, high-quality color and depth data can be obtained simultaneously in real time through the video stream. In this paper, we propose a vehicles overtaking detection method using RGB-D data captured by the Kinect device in simulated traffic scenes. Vehicles are detected and tracked with a robust traffic scene understanding on RGB-D data. The depth data is utilized to recognize vehicles overtaking by analyzing the posture change of vehicles in different scenes. The principle of vehicles overtaking detection is to fit the line of vehicle side in the coordinate system and calculate the angle between the vehicle side and the road orientation. As a consequence, the posture change of the vehicle can be recognized. The proposed method is evaluated using simulation experiments which show that our work has good performance in vehicles overtaking detection and tracking.