A new approach that fuses camera and radar data can now track vehicles precisely at distances of up to 500 meters. Real-time data on the flow and density of traffic can help city managers avoid congestion and prevent accidents. So-called roadside perception, which uses sensors and cameras to track vehicles, can help create smart roads that continually gather this information and relay it to control rooms.
Installing large numbers of road-side sensors can be expensive, though, as well as time consuming to maintain. For smart roads to be cost effective you need to use as few sensors as possible, she says, which means sensors need to be able to track vehicles at significant distances. Using a new approach to fuse data from high-definition cameras and millimeter-wave radar, researchers created a system that can pinpoint vehicle locations to within 1.3 meters at ranges of up to 500 meters.
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