Automated techniques for real time platoon detection and identification

This paper proposes methods for detecting platoons in a traffic stream using automated techniques. Three different methods are tested for platoon detection, namely Cluster based approach, modified Gaur and Mirchandani approach, and an Image processing based technique. Corroboration was carried out using dataset from an arterial in Chennai, India. The results obtained showed all the methods working well for platoon identification. The cluster based approach proved to work very well but it is an offline method for platoon identification. For real time environments, the modified G&M method as well as the image processing solution showed promising results for the Indian traffic conditions with the modified G&M approach performing slightly better.