Method and apparatus for shoulder-line detection and gesture spotting detection

• US 8,204,311 B2
• Filed: 02/12/2007
• Issued: 06/19/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 08/14/2006
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute
• Original Assignee: Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute
• Inventors: Kim, Hye Jin, Yoon, Ho Sub, Kim, Do Hyung, Lee, Jae Yeon
• Primary Examiner(s): LEE, JOHN W
• Application Number:
  US11/673,696
• Publication Number:
  US 20080037875A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,954 Days
• Field of Search: None
• US Class Current: 382/190
• CPC Class Codes: G06V 40/20 Movements or behaviour, e.g. gesture recognition recognition of facial expressions G06V40/16

Abstract

A gesture spotting detection method and apparatus employ a shoulder-line algorithm. The shoulder-line detecting method recognizes a GSD calling gesture that occurs in a shoulder-line, head or higher part in a remote distance or a short distance, although a user does not have a fixed posture. In the method, an image of people is received, and skin information of a person in the image is detected to detect a face area. Then, the cloth color information of the person is modeled from the inputted image to detect a cloth area. An external space is defined from the image based on the body space area, and an edge is extracted from the image based on the body space and the external space. Then, shoulder-line information is acquired based on an energy function obtained based on the body space, the external space, and the edge.

Claims

1. A shoulder-line detecting method, comprising:

receiving an image of a target person;

defining a body space area from the received image;

defining an external space area from the received image based on the body space area;

extracting an edge area from a boundary area between the body space area and the external space area as the edge area; and

calculating an energy value of the edge area while rotating an edge branched out from the edge area, based on the contact point of the branched edge and the edge area, and acquiring shoulder-line information from the branched edge when the energy value of the edge area is maximized, wherein the energy value of the edge area is maximized by determining an angle between the edge area and the branched edge that maximizes a ratio of the body space area to the external space area.

2. The shoulder-line detecting method according to claim 1, wherein the step of defining the external space area includes:

detecting skin information of a person in the received image to detect a face area; and

modeling cloth color information of the person whose face position from the received image determine the relative color region of the people'"'"'s clothes.

3. The shoulder-line detecting method according to claim 2, wherein a Face Detection algorithm provided by OpenCV is used in the step of extracting the skin information.

4. The shoulder-line detecting method according to claim 2, wherein an area including skin color information is extracted from the received image and determined as a face area in the step of detecting the skin information.

5. The shoulder-line detecting method according to claim 4, wherein the skin color information is based on Peer'"'"'s color model.

6. The shoulder-line detecting method according to claim 2, wherein the cloth color information is extracted from the received image and a cloth area is detected by performing a color histogram backprojection onto the image based on the above-detected face area in the step of modeling the cloth color information.

7. The shoulder-line detecting method according to claim 2, wherein cloth color information of an upper half body is modeled and traced along with the face information of the people, and an HSV histogram is obtained in the upper half body area of the image to thereby represent first, second and third-order statistic values thereof in a 9-dimensional arrangement in the step of modeling the cloth color information.

8. The shoulder-line detecting method according to claim 1, wherein the external space area is defined as an area having the same length and width as the body space area, which is defined in the defining of a body space, and in the step of defining the external space.

9. The shoulder-line detecting method according to claim 1, wherein edge area information is acquired from the received image based on spatial gradient information of the received image in the step of extracting the edge area.

10. The shoulder-line detecting method according to claim 1, wherein a boundary area between the body space area and the external space area is defined as an edge area in the step of extracting the edge area.

11. The shoulder-line detecting method according to claim 1, wherein in the step of acquiring the shoulder-line information, when the energy function for detecting a shoulder-line is defined as the following Equation 1:

12. A non-transitory computer-readable recording medium for storing a computer program that implements a method for detecting a shoulder-line, comprising:

receiving an image of a target person;

defining a body space area from the received image;

defining an external space area from the received image based on the body space area;

extracting an edge area from a boundary area between the body space area and the external space area as the edge area; and

calculating an energy value of the edge area while rotating an edge branched out from the edge area, based on the contact point of the branched edge and the edge area, and acquiring shoulder-line information from the branched edge when the energy value of the edge area is maximized, wherein the energy value of the edge area is maximized by determining an angle between the edge area and the branched edge that maximizes a ratio of the body space area to the external space area.

13. A shoulder-line detecting apparatus, comprising:

a computer processor;

an image input module for receiving an image of a target person through an external vision sensor;

a body space area defining module for detecting a body space area from the received image provided by the image input module;

an external space area defining module for defining an external space area based on the received image provided by the image input module and the body space area provided by the body space area defining module;

an edge area defining module for defining an edge area based on the body space area information and the external space area information; and

a shoulder-line detecting module for calculating an energy value of the edge area while rotating an edge branched out from the edge area, based on the contact point of the branched edge and the edge area, and acquiring shoulder-line information from the branched edge when the energy value of the edge area is maximized, wherein the energy value of the edge area is maximized by determining an angle between the edge area and the branched edge that maximizes a ratio of the body space area to the external space area.

14. The shoulder-line detecting apparatus according to claim 13, wherein the body space area defining module extracts a face area and a cloth area from the received image obtained in the image input module, and defines a body space area based on the face area and a cloth area.

15. The shoulder-line detecting apparatus according to claim 13, wherein the edge area defining module defines the edge space area as a boundary area between the body space area and the external space area.

16. The shoulder-line detecting apparatus according to claim 13, wherein when the energy function for detecting a shoulder-line is defined as the following Equation 1: