Automated Vehicle Recognition with Deep Convolutional Neural Networks

In recent years there has been growing interest in the use of non-intrusive systems such as radar and infrared systems for vehicle recognition. State-of-the-art nonintrusive systems can report up to eight classes of vehicle types. Video-based systems, which arguably are the most popular nonintrusive detection systems, can report only very coarse classification levels (up to four classes), even with the best-performing vision systems. The present study developed a vision system that can report finer vehicle classifications according to FHWA's scheme and is also comparable to other nonintrusive recognition systems. The proposed system decoupled object recognition into two main tasks: localization and classification. It began with localization by generating class-independent region proposals for each video frame, then it used deep convolutional neural networks to extract feature descriptors for each proposed region, and, finally, the system scored and classified the proposed regions by using a linear support vector machines template on the feature descriptors. The precision of the system varied by vehicle class. Passenger cars and SUVs were detected at a precision rate of 95%. The precision rates for single-unit, single-trailer, and double-trailer trucks ranged between 92% and 94%. According to receiver operating characteristic curves, the best system performance can be achieved under free flow, daytime or nighttime, and with good video resolution.