Recovery of Vehicle Trajectories from

Tracking Data for Analysis Purposes

Dalia Tiešytė, Christian S. Jensen

{dalia,csj}@cs.aau.dk

ITS 2007, Aalborg, Denmark

The TransDB Project
• TransDB: www.cs.aau.dk/TransDB)

Vehicle tracking with focus on scheduled journeys
 Historical data analysis
 Prediction of travel times and improvement of
schedules

Historical Statistical Travel

analysis patterns
positions

Tracking

GPS data Prediction Scheduling

Tracking
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The Tracking System - Example

Historical
data
GPS repository
Position
Position 2 18:05 AAU Busterm
Central
server
Position-related
information

Threshold- Process
based position-related
tracking data

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Roadmap
• Background

Tracking, prediction, and historical data analysis
• Problem statement
 The trajectory function
 The most optimal trajectory
• The recovery algorithm
• Analysis and experimental results
• Discussion

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Background
• Tracking algorithms

Shared movement prediction [Čivilis et al., Wolfson et al., etc.]

pos (t ) = f ( posup , tup )

• Movement prediction functions
 Linear movement function.

Deviation from the schedule.

Advanced prediction (e.g., neural networks).

• Recovery of vehicle trajectories


Assume linear movement in-between updated points.

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Position Threshold-Based Tracking
• Share the vehicle’s movement function between
the server and the vehicle.
• Update when the GPS position deviates by
threshold thr from the server’s predicted position.
• Position accuracy guarantees (thr).

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Problem Statement
• Available data:

A sequence of position updates with accuracy
guarantees.
 Movement prediction function.

• Recover vehicle’s trajectory that:


Is as close as possible to the actual trajectory.

Preserves accuracy guarantees.

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Recovery of Trajectories

 
v = vmax

The updated position is The updated position is

later than expected later than expected


Assume the max. speed Assume the min. speed (0)
vmax before the update before the update
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Analytical Study
• The recovered (expected) trajectory fexp
 Preserves accuracy guarantees thr:
| f exp (t) – f act(t)| ≤ thr

 Is at least as close to the actual trajectory fact

as the initial prediction.
| f exp (t) – f act(t)| ≤ | f pred (t) – f act(t)|
 Is the “best” recovery with the given data.
′ (| f exp (t) – f act(t)| ≤ | f exp
∀f exp ′ (t) – f act(t)|)

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Experimental Results

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Discussion
• The proposed techniques recover close-to-actual
trajectories of vehicles.
 The “best” with the given data.
• They may be used for…
 pattern mining,
 better predictions of future trajectories,
 better scheduling,…
• Possible future research directions
 Use all available constraints (e.g., speed limits).
 Investigate, how the recovered trajectories can be used by
similarity functions, clustering algorithms, etc.

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Acknowledgements
• Nordjyllands Trafikselskab (NT)
www.nordjyllandstrafikselskab.dk

• Telenor Connect A/S (TNC Connect)

www.telenorconnect.com

• Forskningsstyrelsen (Danish research

agency) www.forsk.dk

• Aalborg University and

Daisy group daisy.aau.dk

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Thank you!


Questions
?
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