Patent ID: 8849554

Claim:
A traffic sensing system for sensing traffic at a roadway, the system comprising: a first sensor having a first field of view; a second sensor having a second field of view, wherein the first and second fields of view at least partially overlap in a common field of view over a portion of the roadway, wherein the first sensor and the second sensor are different types of sensors that together provide input of different sensing modalities in a hybrid mode to a hybrid detection module for individual processing; and a controller configured to process output of the hybrid detection module to: normalize different coordinate systems of the first and second fields of view so locations in the first and second fields of view are usable together and interchangeably; and select a sensor data stream for at least a portion of the common field of view from the different sensing modalities of the different first and/or second sensor types as a function of operating conditions at the roadway based upon post-processing of normalized data streams from the different sensing modalities, in order to provide roadway traffic detection, wherein the operating conditions include variations of lighting and visibility of an object determined from the normalized data streams.