Collecting Traffic Video Data using Portable Poles: Survey, Proposal, and Analysis

Several initiatives have been launched to help prevention of traffic accidents and near-accidents across the European Union. To aid the overall goal of reducing deaths and injuries related to traffic, one must understand the causation of the traffic accidents in order to prevent them. Rather than deploying a person to physically monitor a location, the task is eased by camera equipment installed in existing infrastructure, e.g. poles, and buildings, etc. In rural areas there is however a very limited infrastructure available which complicates the data acquisition. But even if there is infrastructure available in either the rural area or the urban area, this might not serve as an ideal position to capture video data from. In this work, we survey and provide an overview of available and relevant portable poles setups with respect to capturing data in both urban areas and rural areas. The conclusion of the survey shows a lack of a mobile, lightweight, compact, and easy deployable portable pole. We therefore design and develop a new portable pole meeting these requirements. The new proposed portable pole can be deployed by 2 persons in 2 hours in both rural areas as well as urban areas due to its compactness. The deployment and usage of the new portable pole is a complimentary tool, which may improve the camera capturing angle in case existing infrastructure is insufficient. This ultimately improves the traffic monitoring opportunities. Further, the survey of selected portable poles provides an excellent overview and can aid multiple applications within road traffic.