Robust Audio-Based Vehicle Counting in Low-to-Moderate Traffic Flow

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel audio-based vehicle counting method that formulates counting as a regression problem predicting vehicle-microphone distance, achieving high accuracy in low-to-moderate traffic with minimal error.

Contribution

The paper proposes a new regression-based approach for vehicle counting using audio signals, with a novel minima detection threshold setting and high-frequency features for noise robustness.

Findings

VC error below 2% in unseen locations

Regression accuracy improved with high-frequency power features

Method effective in noisy environments

Abstract

The paper presents a method for audio-based vehicle counting (VC) in low-to-moderate traffic using one-channel sound. We formulate VC as a regression problem, i.e., we predict the distance between a vehicle and the microphone. Minima of the proposed distance function correspond to vehicles passing by the microphone. VC is carried out via local minima detection in the predicted distance. We propose to set the minima detection threshold at a point where the probabilities of false positives and false negatives coincide so they statistically cancel each other in total vehicle number. The method is trained and tested on a traffic-monitoring dataset comprising $422$ short, $20$-second one-channel sound files with a total of $ 1421 $ vehicles passing by the microphone. Relative VC error in a traffic location not used in the training is below $ 2 \%$ within a wide range of detection threshold values. Experimental results show that the regression accuracy in noisy environments is improved by introducing a novel high-frequency power feature.