DEVICE, METHOD, AND COMPUTER FOR IMAGE-BASED COUNTING OF OBJECTS PASSING THROUGH A COUNTING SECTION IN A SPECIFIED DIRECTION

• US 20110037852A1
• Filed: 11/20/2009
• Published: 02/17/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 01/13/2009
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Robert Bosch GmbH
• Original Assignee: Robert Bosch GmbH
• Inventors: Ebling, Julia, Krueger, Christof, Warzelhan, Jan Karl
• Granted Patent: US 9,418,300 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 348/143
• CPC Class Codes: G06V 20/53 Recognition of crowd images, e.g. recognition of crowd congestion

Abstract

For operators of public or commercial buildings, such as supermarkets, it is interesting to determine how many persons, in particular potential buyers, enter the building each day. In other areas, as well, entering and exiting moving objects are counted: it is typical, for example, that cars driving into and out of a parking garage are counted. The invention relates to a device 1 for counting objects in a monitoring area, having a counting module 9, wherein the counting module comprises an object counter increasing by one counting value when one of the objects completely passes through a counting section 6 in a counting direction 4 as a counting object, having at least one monitoring camera 2 for capturing the monitoring area, wherein the monitoring camera 2 is designed for outputting an image data stream of the monitoring area, and having an extraction module 10 designed for extracting moving image areas in a current image of the image data flow, wherein the moving image areas can represent the objects or partial segments thereof, wherein the counting module 9 is designed for increasing the object counter 9 by a partial value for each current image for one of the moving image areas 3, the direction of motion thereof corresponding to the counting direction 4 and thus representing a potential counting object or a partial segment thereof, said partial value being less than the counting value.

Claims

1. A device (1) for counting objects in a surveillance region, comprising a counting module (9), wherein the counting module includes an object counter that is increased by one counting value, on average, when one of the objects, as the object to be counted, completely passes through a counting section (6) in a counting direction (4), and including at least one surveillance camera (2) for recording the surveillance region, wherein the surveillance camera (2) is designed to output an image data stream of the surveillance region, and including an extraction module (10) designed to extract moving image regions in a current image of the image data flow, wherein the moving image regions can represent the objects or segments thereof,

characterized in that

the counting module (9) is designed to increase the object counter (9) by a partial value for each current image for one of the moving image regions (3), the direction of motion thereof corresponding to the counting direction (4) and thus representing a potential object to be counted or a segment thereof, the partial value being less than the counting value.

2. The device (1) according to claim 1,

characterized in that

the extraction module (10) includes a flow module (11) designed to determine an optical flow field having flow vectors in order to extract the moving image regions in the current image.

3. The device (1) according to claim 1,

characterized in that

the counting module (9) is designed to sum a partial value for each new and/or updated flow field having a moving image region that corresponds to an object to be counted.

4. The device (1) according to claim 1,

characterized in that

the objects to be counted are non-individualized and/or untracked and/or anonymized.

5. The device (1) according to claim 1, characterized by an estimating module (14) which estimates a subsection of the counting section (6) that the corresponding object to be counted has covered in the current image depending on the direction of motion or velocity of the moving image region.

6. The device (1) according to claim 5,

characterized in that

the subsection is estimated by projecting the flow vectors onto the counting direction (4) and/or the counting section (6).

7. The device (1) according to claim 6,

characterized in that

the size of the partial value is determined depending on the subsection that was covered and/or the size of the segment of the object to be counted.

8. The device (1) according to claim 1, characterized by a segmenting module (12) which segments the moving image regions and/or the flow regions into object regions.

9. The device (1) according to claim 8, characterized by an object identification device (13) which is designed to identify the object class of the segmented object regions.

10. The device (1) according to claim 8,

characterized in that

the subsection is assigned to the segmented object region.

11. A method for counting objects in a surveillance region in a counting direction (4) along a counting section (6), wherein an object counter is increased by one counting value when one of the objects, as the object to be counted, completely passes through the counting section (6) in the counting direction (4), wherein moving image regions are extracted from a current image of the surveillance region, wherein the object counter increases by a partial value for the current image for one of the moving image regions, the direction of motion thereof corresponding to the counting direction (4) and thus representing a potential object to be counted or a segment thereof, the partial value being less than the counting value.

12. A computer program comprising program code means for carrying out all steps of the method according to claim 11 when the program is run on a computer and/or a device (1).