Vehicle speed detection from a single motion blurred image

An image-based method for vehicle speed detection is presented. Conventional speed measurement techniques use radar- or laser-based devices, which are usually more expensive compared to a passive camera system. In this work, a single image captured with vehicle motion is used for speed measurement. Due to the relative motion between the camera and a moving object during the camera exposure time, motion blur occurs in the dynamic region of the image. It provides a visual cue for the speed measurement of a moving object. An approximate target region is first segmented and blur parameters are estimated from the motion blurred subimage. The image is then deblurred and used to derive other parameters. Finally, the vehicle speed is calculated according to the imaging geometry, camera pose, and blur extent in the image. Experiments have shown the estimated speeds within 5% of actual speeds for both local and highway traffic.