Surveillance system and surveilling method

• US 8,248,474 B2
• Filed: 12/25/2009
• Issued: 08/21/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 11/13/2009
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Cloud Network Technology Singapore Pte. Ltd. (Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., Ltd.)
• Original Assignee: Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., Ltd.
• Inventors: Lee, Hou-Hsien, Lee, Chang-Jung, Lo, Chih-Ping
• Primary Examiner(s): Shaw, Peling
• Assistant Examiner(s): Cloud, Joiya M
• Application Number:
  US12/647,429
• Publication Number:
  US 20110115917A1
• Time in Patent Office: 970 Days
• Field of Search: None
• US Class Current: 348/159
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 2207/30201 Face
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 2207/30232 Surveillance
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 7/337 involving reference images or patches
• CPC Class Codes: G06V 10/147 Details of sensors, e.g. sensor lenses fingerprint or palmprint sensors G06V40/13; vascular sensors G06V40/145; eye sensors G06V40/19
• CPC Class Codes: G06V 10/24 Aligning, centring, orientation detection or correction of the image
• 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: G06V 40/16 Human faces, e.g. facial parts, sketches or expressions
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 7/181 for receiving images from a plurality of remote sources

Abstract

A surveillance system includes two cameras and a processing unit. The two cameras capture a scene to obtain a low resolution image and a high resolution image. The processing unit checks the low resolution image to find a reference image in the low resolution image to determine coordinates of the reference image in the low resolution image. The processing unit further determines coordinates of the reference image in the high resolution image to select a portion in the second image correspondingly. The processing unit crops and resizes an image size of the selected reference image according to a ratio of an image size between the low resolution image and the high resolution image, and replaces the reference image in the low resolution image with the cropped and resized reference image to obtain a new image. The new image is for being identified.

Claims

1. A surveillance system, comprising:

a low-resolution camera to capture a scene to obtain a low resolution image;

a high-resolution camera to capture the same scene to obtain a high resolution image, wherein the low resolution image has a same content with the high resolution image, and an image size of the low resolution image is smaller than an image size of the high resolution image;

a processing unit; and

a storage unit connected to the processing unit and storing a plurality of modules to be executed by the processing unit, wherein the plurality of modules comprise;

a detecting module to check the low resolution image to find a reference image in the low resolution image;

a coordinate determining module to determine coordinates of the reference image in the low resolution image, and coordinates of a corresponding reference image in the high resolution image according to a ratio of the image sizes of the low resolution image and the high resolution image;

an editing module to select the reference image in the high resolution image according to the coordinates of the reference image in the high resolution image, crop and resize the selected reference image according to the ratio of the image sizes of the low resolution image and the high resolution image, and replace the reference image in the low resolution image with the cropped and resized reference image to obtain a new image; and

an identifying module to compare the cropped and resized reference image in the new image with a standard image to determine whether the two images are different.

2. The surveillance system of claim 1, wherein the detecting module is a face detecting module, the reference image is a facial image.

3. The surveillance system of claim 1, wherein the detecting module is a license plate detecting module, the reference image is a license plate.

4. A surveilling method comprising:

capturing a scene by a low-resolution camera and a high-resolution camera simultaneously to obtain a low resolution image and a high resolution image respectively, wherein an image size of the low resolution image is smaller than an image size of the high resolution image;

detecting the low resolution image to obtain a reference image in the low resolution image, and to determine coordinates of the reference image in the low resolution image;

determining coordinates of the corresponding reference image in the high resolution image according to a ratio of the image sizes of the low resolution image and the high resolution image;

selecting the reference image with the coordinates of the reference image in the high resolution image;

cropping and resizing the selected reference image according to the ratio of the image sizes of the low resolution image and the high resolution image;

replacing the reference image in the low resolution image with the cropped and resized reference image to obtain a new image; and

comparing the cropped and resized reference image in the new image with a standard image to determine whether the two images are different.

5. The surveilling method of claim 4, wherein the step of determining coordinates of the reference image in the high resolution image comprises:

defining coordinates of centers of the low resolution image and the high resolution image are (0,

     0);

determining the ratio of the image size between the low resolution image and the high resolution image; and

multiplying the coordinates of the reference image in the low resolution image with the ratio of the image size to obtain the coordinates of the reference image in the high resolution image.

6. The surveilling method of claim 4, wherein the step of identifying the new image comprises:

comparing pixel values of the cropped and resized reference image in the new image and the standard image to determine whether the two images are different.

7. The surveilling method of claim 4, wherein the detecting module is a face detecting module, the reference image is a facial image.

8. The surveilling method of claim 4, wherein the detecting module is a license plate detecting module, the reference image is a license plate.