Tracking traffic
TrafficVision, a division of the Clemson-based start-up company Omnibond, develops software to automatically process video from roadway cameras. Clemson researchers Stan Birchfield, Wayne Sarasua, and Neeraj Kanhere created the initial technology when they discovered that thousands of manually operated cameras along major roadways in the United States were under-used. Meanwhile, state and federal transportation officials and local municipalities needed better real-time information about traffic volume, vehicle type, speed, and density.
The team’s patented technology, licensed through the Clemson University Research Foundation (CURF), builds a background model that adapts to changing light and weather conditions and tracks vehicles over time by comparing their appearance in successive frames. After a presentation at a transportation conference in 2007, the team received invitations to install the technology in Maryland and New York, including the Long Island Expressway. Since then, as transportation officials have become more convinced about the benefits of using TrafficVision, the technology has been installed in numerous U.S. locations.
For more information, go to TrafficVision.
Twelve years ago, four Clemson faculty members got together and decided to create some new materials. They didn’t set out to start a business, hire a work force, or establish a brand.
“We thought about the obesity problem,” Muth says. “They have pedometers to track steps. What if we had something to track bites?”
The team’s patented technology builds a background model that adapts to changing light and weather conditions and tracks vehicles over time by comparing their appearance in successive frames.
Over the past two decades, more than seventeen spin-off companies have licensed Clemson University technologies, and many of these companies have been established near Clemson.
