Object Classification with Roadside LiDAR Data Using a Probabilistic Neural Network

Abstract

Object classification is important information for different transportation areas. This research developed a probabilistic neural network (PNN) classifier for object classification using roadside Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR). The objective was to classify the road user on the urban road into one of four classes: Pedestrian, bicycle, passenger car, and truck. Five features calculated from the point cloud generated from the roadside LiDAR were selected to represent the difference between different classes. A total of 2736 records (2062 records for training, and 674 records for testing) were manually marked for training and testing the PNN algorithm. The data were collected at three different sites representing different scenarios. The performance of the classification was evaluated by comparing the result of the PNN with those of the support vector machine (SVM) and the random forest (RF). The comparison results showed that the PNN can provide the results of classification with the highest accuracy among the three investigated methods. The overall accuracy of the PNN for object classification was 97.6% using the testing database. The errors in the classification results were also diagnosed. Discussions about the direction of future studies were also provided at the end of this paper.