Autonomous Wildlife Crossing Detection Method with Roadside Lidar Sensors

Wildlife animals, which cross highway surface, are a major concern of highway safety in rural and suburban areas. Although thermal cameras and radar sensors have been applied for wildlife detection, new technologies need to be explored for reliable and cost-effective wildlife detection and rural traffic safety. This research provided an innovative approach to detecting and tracking wildlife activities at highways using 3D Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) technology. A data processing algorithm was developed to exclude the background and extract the wildlife from the LiDAR data. The results of the pilot study showed that this algorithm can extract real-time position, direction and speed information of detected deer. All deer crossing the road were successfully detected and tracked by the algorithm. With the accurate 3D locations in the LiDAR data, multiple sensors can be easily integrated as a LiDAR sensor network along a segment of a freeway, to offer extended covering range. When the roadside LiDAR sensors can track vehicles and wildlife animals synchronously, this research initiated a new method to improve the rural traffic safety, which can warn drivers about risks of wildlife-vehicle crashes. The LiDAR application proposed in this research can be further integrated with connected vehicle technologies for the real-time information dissemination.

• Supplemental Notes:
  • This paper was sponsored by TRB committee ADC30 Standing Committee on Ecology and Transportation.
• Authors:
  • Wu, Jianqing
  • Xu, Hao
  • Zhao, Junxuan
  • Simpson, Nova
• Conference:
  • Transportation Research Board 97th Annual Meeting
  • Location: Washington DC, United States
  • Date: 2018-1-7 to 2018-1-11
• Date: 2018

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Digital/other
• Features: Figures; References;
• Pagination: 5p

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Animal vehicle crashes; Laser radar; Sensors; Traffic safety; Wildlife crossings
• Geographic Terms: Nevada
• Subject Areas: Environment; Highways; Operations and Traffic Management; Safety and Human Factors;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01657947
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: 18-00500
• Files: TRIS, TRB, ATRI
• Created Date: Jan 25 2018 9:34AM