Patent Document ID: 8933818
Application ID: 13798798
Patent Status: 1

Claim One:
1. A method of detecting a presence of bicycles in a roadway for traffic signal controller management, comprising: creating a virtual bicycle zone in one or more lanes of a roadway near a traffic intersection; generating, for each virtual bicycle zone, a bicycle detection strip at a specified portion adjacent to each virtual bicycle zone, the bicycle detection strip having a substantially similar shape as the bicycle zone; detecting motion inside the bicycle detection strip using an object detection means; and initiating one or more data processing functions embodied in a plurality of instructions configured to classify a type of object present as the object travels through the bicycle detection strip, the one or more data processing functions including determining whether the object present in the bicycle detection strip is either a wide object or a narrow object by analyzing a plurality of pixels that experience changes from frame to frame in a video data stream as the object passes through the bicycle detection strip, wherein a narrow object is initially classified as a bicycle, and a wide object is initially classified as a motorized vehicle; and analyzing one or more additional characteristics of the object inside the virtual bicycle zone to confirm or reject the initial classification of the object, the one or more additional characteristics including gray scale changes in images from the video data stream, comparison of predicted behavior of the object, and a plurality of detection rules based on additional data from the object detection means differentiating bicycles from motorized vehicles.