SITUATION DETERMINING APPARATUS, SITUATION DETERMINING METHOD, SITUATION DETERMINING PROGRAM, ABNORMALITY DETERMINING APPARATUS, ABNORMALITY DETERMINING METHOD, ABNORMALITY DETERMINING PROGRAM, AND CONGESTION ESTIMATING APPARATUS

• US 20100177963A1
• Filed: 10/20/2008
• Published: 07/15/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 10/26/2007
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Panasonic Corporation (Panasonic Holdings Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Panasonic Corporation (Panasonic Holdings Corporation)
• Inventors: Kondo, Kenji, Araki, Shoichi, Yokomitsu, Sumio
• Granted Patent: US 8,472,715 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 382/170
• CPC Class Codes: B61L 23/00 Control, warning or like safety means along the route or between vehicles or trains
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 2207/20012 Locally adaptive
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 2207/30232 Surveillance
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 7/20 Analysis of motion motion estimation for coding, decoding, compressing or decompressing digital video signals H04N19/43, H04N19/51
• CPC Class Codes: G06V 20/52 Surveillance or monitoring of activities, e.g. for recognising suspicious objects recognising microscopic objects G06V20/69
• CPC Class Codes: G08G 1/04 using optical or ultrasonic detectors

Abstract

The invention provides a situation determining apparatus, a situation determining method, a situation determining program, an abnormality determining apparatus, an abnormality determining method, and an abnormality determining program capable of easily determining the situation of a monitoring place and the degree of congestion. In addition, the invention provides a congestion estimating apparatus capable of easily and accurately estimating the degree of congestion of persons using an image. A situation determining apparatus for analyzing captured moving images or a plurality of captured still images to determine a movement situation and/or a degree of congestion of persons includes: a local image change ratio calculating unit 120 that calculates a time change ratio of a brightness value in a local area of the captured images; and a situation determining unit 170 that analyzes a histogram of the time change ratios of a plurality of local areas calculated by the local image change ratio calculating unit 120 and determines the movement situation of the persons and/or the degree of congestion of the persons. In addition, a congestion estimating apparatus includes: a movement information generating unit 613 that generates movement information from an image sequence output from an image generating unit 611; a texture information generating unit 615 that generates texture information of the image; a reference movement information generating unit 614 that stores and updates reference movement information, which is a reference for movement; a reference texture information generating unit 616 that stores and updates reference texture information for determining whether there is a person; a movement information determining unit 618 that determines whether there is a movement; a texture information determining unit 619 that determines whether there is the same texture information as a person; and a staying determining unit 620 that receives the determination result of the movement information and the determination result of the texture information and determines whether there is a person. The congestion estimating apparatus determines similarity on the basis of whether there is a movement and texture to determine various states of each area, thereby estimating the degree of congestion. In addition, the congestion estimating apparatus provides the index of a congestion situation and information about the congestion situation.

Claims

1. A situation determining apparatus for analyzing captured moving images or a plurality of captured still images to determine a movement situation and/or a degree of congestion of persons, the situation determining apparatus comprising:

a local image change ratio calculating unit that calculates a time change ratio of a brightness value in a local area of the captured images; and

a situation determining unit that analyzes a histogram of the time change ratios of a plurality of local areas calculated by the local image change ratio calculating unit and determines the movement situation of the persons and/or the degree of congestion of the persons.

3. The situation determining apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the situation determining unit includes a reference histogram storage unit and a histogram comparing unit.

4. The situation determining apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the situation determining unit includes a feature extracting unit, an identification reference storage unit, and an identifying unit.

5. The situation determining apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the movement situation includes at least a situation in which a moving route of the persons is deflected to one side.

6. An abnormality determining apparatus for analyzing moving images or a plurality of still images captured by an imaging unit that is provided at a platform of a station to determine an abnormal situation, the abnormality determining apparatus comprising:

the situation determining apparatus according to claim 5;

a train arrival detecting unit that detects an arrival of a train to the platform; and

an abnormality determining unit which determines that abnormality occurs when it is determined that the moving route of the persons is deflected to the one side as the situation determination result after a predetermined amount of time has elapsed from the acquisition of train arrival information by the train arrival detecting unit, on the basis of a situation determination result of the situation determining apparatus and the train arrival information obtained by the train arrival detecting unit.

7. The abnormality determining apparatus according to claim 6, further comprising:

a notifying unit that gives the determination result of the abnormality determining unit to a predetermined contact address when the abnormality determining unit determines that abnormality occurs.

2. A situation determining apparatus for analyzing captured moving images or a plurality of captured still images to determine a movement situation and/or a degree of congestion of persons, the situation determining apparatus comprising:

an image input unit that inputs moving images or a plurality of still images of persons captured in an imaging target place;

an image accumulating unit that accumulates the images input by the image input unit;

a local image change detecting unit that selects two images captured at a first time interval from the images accumulated in the image accumulating unit and detects a change between the two images in each local area using area division information indicating a division method of dividing the image into a plurality of local areas;

a local image change information accumulating unit that accumulates the change between the two images detected by the local image change detecting unit as image change information;

a local image change ratio calculating unit that counts the number of changes between images given at a second time interval in each local area on the basis of the image change information accumulated in the local image change information accumulating unit, and calculates an image change ratio of each local area;

a local image change ratio accumulating unit that accumulates the image change ratios of a plurality of local areas calculated by the local image change ratio calculating unit;

a local image change ratio histogram calculating unit that calculates a histogram of the image change ratios of the plurality of local areas accumulated by the local image change ratio accumulating unit; and

a situation determining unit that analyzes the histogram calculated by the local image change ratio histogram calculating unit to determine the movement situation and or the degree of congestion of the persons in the imaging target place.

8. A situation determining method of analyzing captured moving images or a plurality of captured still images to determine a movement situation and/or a degree of congestion of persons, the situation determining method comprising:

a local image change ratio calculating step of calculating a time change ratio of a brightness value in a local area of the captured images; and

a situation determining step of analyzing a histogram of the time change ratios of a plurality of local areas calculated by the local image change ratio calculating unit step and determining the movement situation of the persons and/or the degree of congestion of the persons.

9. The situation determining method according to claim 8, wherein the movement situation includes at least a situation in which a moving route of the persons is deflected to one side.

10. An abnormality determining method of analyzing moving images or a plurality of still images captured by an imaging unit that is provided at a platform of a station to determine an abnormal situation, the abnormality determining method comprising:

a situation determining step of performing the situation determining method of claim 9;

a train arrival detecting step of detecting an arrival of a train to the platform; and

an abnormality determining step of determining that abnormality occurs when it is determined that the moving route of the persons is deflected to the one side as the situation determination result after a predetermined amount of time has elapsed from the acquisition of train arrival information by the train arrival detecting unit, on the basis of a situation determination result of the situation determining step and the train arrival information obtained by the train arrival detecting step.

13. A storage medium for recording an abnormality determining program that analyzes moving images or a plurality of still images captured by an imaging unit that is provided at a platform of a station to determine an abnormal situation, the abnormality determining program allowing a computer to execute:

a situation determining step of performing the situation determining method of claim 9;

a train arrival detecting step of detecting an arrival of a train to the platform; and

an abnormality determining step of determining that abnormality occurs when it is determined that the moving route of the persons is deflected to the one side as the situation determination result after a predetermined amount of time has elapsed from the acquisition of train arrival information by the train arrival detecting unit, on the basis of a situation determination result of the situation determining step and the train arrival information obtained by the train arrival detecting step.

11. A storage medium for recording a situation determining program that analyzes captured moving images or a plurality of captured still images to determine a movement situation and/or a degree of congestion of persons, the situation determining program allowing a computer to execute:

a local image change ratio calculating step of calculating a time change ratio of a brightness value in a local area of the captured images; and

a situation determining step of analyzing a histogram of the time change ratios of a plurality of local areas calculated by the local image change ratio calculating step and determining the movement situation of the persons and/or the degree of congestion of the persons.

12. The storage medium according to claim 11, wherein the movement situation includes at least a situation in which a moving route of the persons is deflected to one side.

14. A congestion estimating apparatus comprising:

an image generating unit that converts an image of various scenes or an image captured by a camera into a digital image and outputs the digital image;

an area dividing unit that divides an input image into partial areas;

a movement information generating unit that generates movement information from the image output from the image generating unit;

a texture information generating unit that generates texture information of the image output from the image generating unit;

a reference movement information generating unit that stores and updates reference movement information, which is a reference for movement in each partial area;

a reference texture information generating unit that stores and updates reference texture information for determining whether there is a person in each partial area;

a storage unit that stores the reference movement information and the reference texture information;

a movement information determining unit that compares the movement information output from the movement information generating unit with the reference movement information generated by the reference movement information generating unit to determine whether there is a movement in each partial area;

a texture information determining unit that compares the texture information output from the texture information generating unit with the reference texture information generated by the reference texture information generating unit to determine whether there is the same texture information as a person in each partial area; and

a staying determining unit that receives determination results from the movement information determining unit and the texture information determining unit to determine whether there is a person in each area.

15. The congestion estimating apparatus according to claim 14, further comprising:

a timing generating unit that receives the image generated by the image generating unit and determines whether there is a person from movement information, wherein, only when it is determined that there is a person, the timing generating unit gives update timing to the reference movement information generating unit and to the reference texture information generating unit.

16. The congestion estimating apparatus according to claim 15, wherein the timing generating unit detects approach timing of a vehicle, and gives the update timing to the reference movement information generating unit and to the reference texture information generating unit at each approach timing.

17. The congestion estimating apparatus according to claim 15,

wherein the reference movement information generating unit samples reference movement information at the timing notified by the timing generating unit to set a threshold value of the reference movement information,

the movement information determining unit determines that there is a movement when the reference movement information is more than a threshold value of the reference movement information;

whereas the movement information determining unit determines that there is no movement when the reference movement information is not more than the threshold value of the reference movement information.

18. The congestion estimating apparatus according to claim 14, wherein the texture information determining unit performs a frequency conversion process on input information to determine similarity in a frequency domain.

19. The congestion estimating apparatus according to claim 14,

wherein the reference texture information generating unit samples reference texture information at the timing notified by the timing generating unit to set the reference texture information, and

the texture information determining unit determines similarity between the texture information generated by the texture information generating unit and the reference texture information generated by the reference texture information generating unit, and when it is determined that the texture information is similar to the reference texture information, the texture information determining unit determines that there is a person.

20. The congestion estimating apparatus according to claim 14, wherein the staying determining unit receives the determination result of the movement information determining unit and the determination result of the texture information determining unit to output a state of any one of a staying area, a movement area, a noise area, and a background area as the state of each area.

21. The congestion estimating apparatus according to claim 14, further comprising:

an abnormality determining unit that receives information output from the staying determining unit, and analyzes each input state to determine whether abnormal congestion occurs.

22. The congestion estimating apparatus according to claim 21,

wherein the abnormality determining unit counts various states of each area, the staying area, the movement area, the noise area, and the background area output from the staying determining unit, and

when a congestion index, which is the sum of the number of staying areas and the number of moving areas, is reduced by a predetermined threshold value or more after the approach timing of the vehicle obtained by the timing generating unit, the abnormality determining unit determines that abnormality occurs.

23. The congestion estimating apparatus according to claim 21,

wherein the abnormality determining unit counts various states of each area, the staying area, the movement area, the noise area, and the background area output from the staying determining unit, and

when the ratio of the staying area is more than a predetermined value, the abnormality determining unit determines that abnormality occurs.

24. The congestion estimating apparatus according to claim 21,

wherein the abnormality determining unit counts various states of each area, the staying area, the movement area, the noise area, and the background area output from the staying determining unit, and

the abnormality determining unit determines the tendency of the movement of the persons, such as a staying start, staying removal, and a normal state, from the ratios of the staying area and the movement area in time series.