Bicycle tracking using ellipse extraction

A new approach to track bicycles from imagery sensor data is proposed. It is based on detecting ellipsoids in the images, and treat these pair-wise using a dynamic bicycle model. One important application area is in automotive collision avoidance systems, where no dedicated systems for bicyclists yet exist and where very few theoretical studies have been published. Possible conflicts can be predicted from the position and velocity state in the model, but also from the steering wheel articulation and roll angle that indicate yaw changes before the velocity vector changes. An algorithm is proposed which consists of an ellipsoid detection and estimation algorithm and a particle filter. A simulation study of three critical single target scenarios is presented, and the algorithm is shown to produce excellent state estimates. An experiment using a stationary camera and the particle filter for state estimation is performed and has shown encouraging results.