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journal article

Advanced computer vision for extracting georeferenced vehicle trajectories from drone imagery

Fonod, Robert  orcid-logo
•
Cho, Haechan
•
Yeo, Hwasoo
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July 2, 2025
Transportation Research Part C: Emerging Technologies

This paper presents a comprehensive framework for extracting georeferenced vehicle trajectories from high-altitude drone imagery, addressing key challenges in urban traffic monitoring and the limitations of traditional ground-based systems. Our approach integrates several novel contributions, including a tailored object detector optimized for high-altitude bird’s-eye view perspectives, a unique track stabilization method that uses detected vehicle bounding boxes as exclusion masks during image registration, and an orthophoto and master frame-based georeferencing strategy that enhances consistent alignment across multiple drone viewpoints. Additionally, our framework features robust vehicle dimension estimation and detailed road segmentation, enabling comprehensive traffic dynamics analysis. Conducted in the Songdo International Business District, South Korea, the study utilized a multi-drone experiment covering 20 intersections, capturing approximately 12TB of ultra-high-definition video data over four days. The framework produced two high-quality datasets: the Songdo Traffic dataset, comprising approximately 700,000 unique vehicle trajectories, and the Songdo Vision dataset, containing over 5000 human-annotated images with about 300,000 vehicle instances categorized into four classes. Comparisons with high-precision sensor data from an instrumented probe vehicle highlight the accuracy and consistency of our extraction pipeline in dense urban environments. The public release of the Songdo Traffic and Songdo Vision datasets, along with the complete source code for the extraction pipeline, establishes new benchmarks in data quality, reproducibility, and scalability in traffic research. The results demonstrate the potential of integrating drone technology with advanced computer vision methods for precise and cost-effective urban traffic monitoring, providing valuable resources for developing intelligent transportation systems and enhancing traffic management strategies.

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Type
journal article
DOI
10.1016/j.trc.2025.105205
Web of Science ID

WOS:001525689000001

Scopus ID

105009507433

ArXiv ID

arXiv:2411.02136

Author(s)
Fonod, Robert  orcid-logo

EPFL

Cho, Haechan
Yeo, Hwasoo
Geroliminis, Nikolaos  

EPFL

Date Issued

2025-07-02

Publisher

Elsevier BV

Published in
Transportation Research Part C: Emerging Technologies
Volume

178

Article Number

ARTN 105205

Subjects

Computer Science - Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition

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Computer Science - Artificial Intelligence

•

Computer Science - Learning

•

Traffic Monitoring

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Machine Vision

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Vehicle Tracking

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Video Image Processing

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Georeferenced Vehicle Trajectories

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Multi-drone Data Collection

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Urban Traffic

Editorial or Peer reviewed

REVIEWED

Written at

EPFL

EPFL units
LUTS  
FunderFunding(s)Grant NumberGrant URL

Swiss National Science Foundation

NCCR Automation (phase I)(180545)

180545

https://data.snf.ch/grants/grant/180545

Innosuisse – Swiss Innovation Agency

101.645

National Research Foundation of Korea

2022R1A2C1012380

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RelationRelated workURL/DOI

IsSupplementedBy

Songdo Vision: Vehicle Annotations from High-Altitude BeV Drone Imagery in a Smart City

https://infoscience.epfl.ch/handle/20.500.14299/248163

Describes

Stabilo Optimize: A Framework for Comprehensive Evaluation and Analysis for the Stabilo Library

https://infoscience.epfl.ch/handle/20.500.14299/248158

IsSupplementedBy

Songdo Traffic: High Accuracy Georeferenced Vehicle Trajectories from a Large-Scale Study in a Smart City

https://infoscience.epfl.ch/handle/20.500.14299/248162
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Available on Infoscience
March 21, 2025
Use this identifier to reference this record
https://infoscience.epfl.ch/handle/20.500.14299/248159
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