Validation of Vision Tracking at Egnatia Odos Motorway

Tracking applications provide real time on-site information that can be used to detect travel path conflicts, calculate crew productivity and eliminate unnecessary processes at the site. This paper presents the validation of a novel vision based tracking methodology at the Egnatia Odos Motorway in Thessaloniki, Greece. Egnatia Odos is a motorway that connects Turkey with Italy through Greece. Its multiple open construction sites serves as an ideal multi-site test bed for validating construction site tracking methods. The vision based tracking methodology uses video cameras and computer algorithms to calculate the 3D position of project related entities (e.g. personnel, materials and equipment) in construction sites. The approach provides an unobtrusive, inexpensive way of effectively identifying and tracking the 3D location of entities. The process followed in this study starts by acquiring video data from multiple synchronous cameras at several large scale project sites of Egnatia Odos, such as tunnels, interchanges and bridges under construction. Subsequent steps include the evaluation of the collected data and finally, performing the 3D tracking operations on selected entities (heavy equipment and personnel). The accuracy and precision of the method's results is evaluated by comparing it with the actual 3D position of the object, thus assessing the 3D tracking method's effectiveness.