METHOD AND DEVICE FOR MONITORING ROAD STATE

• Main Authors: KONAKA KATSUMI, ENOMOTO HIROYASU, OUCHI TETSUO, ARASAWA TOMOHIRO
• Format: Patent
• Language: English
• Published: 04.04.1997
• Edition: 6
• Subjects: PHYSICS; SIGNALLING; TRAFFIC CONTROL SYSTEMS

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide the method and device for road state monitoring which is more inexpensive and has high performance and estimates the number of vehicles. SOLUTION: When the number of vehicles is estimated, an image of a road surface is inputted from an ITV camera 2 and an image processing part 10 obtains vehicle speed data and road surface condition data. A road surface condition decision part 11 decides road surface conditions from meteorological data obtained from a thermometer 3 and an anemometer 4 and the road condition data obtained from the image processing part 10 and selects a traffic volume-mean speed graph corresponding to the road conditions out of a traffic volume and mean speed data base 13. A vehicle number estimation part 12 substitutes the vehicle speed data calculated by the image processing means 10 in the traffic volume-mean speed graph selected by the road condition decision part 11 and outputs the vehicle number estimation result 14 to an unillustrated center monitor part. If vehicle number measurement precision decreases greatly owing to weather conditions, the number of vehicles can be estimated from a graph which is already generated and shows the relation between traffic volume and mean speeds and the traveling speed of a vehicle that can be measured.