Estimation of vehicle movement in urban areas from thermal video sequences

In this contribution we describe a method to assess the activity of vehicles based on airborne image sequences taken by an infrared camera. At the resolution of approximately one-meter vehicles appear as elongated spots. Active vehicles often appear as a configuration of a dark and a bright spot close to each other, where the latter results from the warm motor hood. For the estimation of vehicle movement a precise measurement of the sensor movement is required. The sensor movement is inferred from image sequences. A robust estimation avoids outliers in the set of point correspondences. A special selection strategy prefers samples that promise estimation precision.