Geo-trax: A Comprehensive Framework for Georeferenced Vehicle Trajectory Extraction from Drone Imagery

Geo-trax (GEO-referenced TRAjectory eXtraction) is a comprehensive pipeline for extracting high-accuracy georeferenced vehicle trajectories from high-altitude drone imagery. Designed specifically for quasi-stationary aerial monitoring in urban traffic scenarios, Geo-trax transforms raw, bird’s-eye view video footage into precise, real-world vehicle trajectories. The framework integrates state-of-the-art computer vision and deep learning modules for vehicle detection, tracking, and trajectory stabilization, followed by a georeferencing stage that employs image registration to align the stabilized video frames with an orthophoto. This registration enables the accurate mapping of vehicle trajectories to real-world coordinates. The resulting pipeline supports large-scale traffic studies by delivering spatially and temporally consistent trajectory data suitable for traffic behavior analysis and simulation. Geo-trax is optimized for urban intersections and arterial corridors, where high-fidelity vehicle-level insights are essential for intelligent transportation systems (ITS) and digital twin applications.