Parking lot management system in working cooperation with intelligent cameras

• US 9,076,060 B2
• Filed: 08/02/2012
• Issued: 07/07/2015
• Est. Priority Date: 12/13/2011
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute
• Original Assignee: Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute
• Inventors: Song, Yoo-Seung, Park, Sang-Joon
• Primary Examiner(s): Tran, Trang U
• Application Number:
  US13/565,010
• Publication Number:
  US 20130147954A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,069 Days
• Field of Search: 348/148, 348/143, 348/149, 348/159, 348/104, 340/932.2, 340/995.19, 340/937, 340/933
• US Class Current: 1/1
• 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 20/52 Surveillance or monitoring of activities, e.g. for recognising suspicious objects recognising microscopic objects G06V20/69
• CPC Class Codes: G06V 20/62 Text, e.g. of license plates, overlay texts or captions on TV images
• CPC Class Codes: G08G 1/0175 by photographing vehicles, e.g. when violating traffic rules
• CPC Class Codes: G08G 1/04 using optical or ultrasonic detectors
• CPC Class Codes: G08G 1/146 where the parking area is a limited parking space, e.g. parking garage, restricted space
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 7/181 for receiving images from a plurality of remote sources
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 7/185 from a mobile camera, e.g. for remote control

Abstract

A parking lot management system that works in cooperation with intelligent cameras is disclosed. The system includes a plurality of intelligent cameras connected to each other via a wired/wireless mesh network, a license plate recognition unit which can recognize a license plate of a vehicle entering and exiting a parking lot, a server for storing and managing information about the vehicle, a parking information board and a vehicle information about the position terminal which provide a user with parking information, and a personal computer for controlling all information.

Claims

1. A parking management apparatus comprising:

a server;

a plurality of intelligent cameras which detect a vehicle through image recognition to create information about the position of the vehicle and an object ID of the vehicle, and send the information about the position and the object ID to the server;

a vehicle recognition unit configured to obtain a license plate number of the vehicle and an entry time of the vehicle and to send the license plate number of the vehicle and the entry time of the vehicle to the server; and

a display device configured to display at least one of the information about the position, the license plate number, the entry time, and an image of the vehicle,

wherein when the detected vehicle moves into a hand-over region in which visual fields of at least two intelligent cameras overlap, the server sends the object ID to another intelligent camera which shares with the visual field; and

wherein the intelligent cameras are connected to each other via a wired or wireless mesh network.

2. The parking management apparatus of claim 1, wherein the display device comprises a vehicle information about the position terminal and a parking information board, and the vehicle information about the position terminal receives the information about the vehicle from the server and displays the information.

3. The parking management apparatus of claim 1, wherein in a case in which there is no hand-over region when the vehicle is moving, the server sends the object ID to an intelligent camera located in a region into which the vehicle is expected to move using a tracing function with a Kalman filter.

4. The parking management apparatus of claim 1, wherein the plurality of intelligent cameras determines whether a vehicle is parked in a parking area managed by the respective intelligent cameras, using a background/panoramic map based algorithm, and store the object ID of the parked vehicle.

5. The parking management apparatus of claim 1, wherein the plurality of intelligent cameras detects an image of the vehicle using a dynamic saliency map algorithm, and after the image is detected, the plurality of intelligent cameras detects image information of the vehicle using binary coding and morphological processes.

6. The parking management apparatus of claim 5, wherein the plurality of intelligent cameras maintains the image information of the vehicle for a predetermined period of times when a large portion of the moving vehicle is hidden by an obstacle.

7. The parking management apparatus of claim 1, further comprising a control personal computer configured to monitor the information about the position of the vehicle and the object ID of the vehicle, which are managed by the server,

wherein the server displays the information sent from the intelligent camera on a GUI device of the control personal computer, and presents a parking region which is automatically assumed using a straight-line detecting algorithm.

8. A parking management server comprising:

a transmission unit configured to send and receive information from a plurality of intelligent cameras or a control personal computer;

and a control unit,

wherein the control unit includes an object ID managing section, an operation section, and a hand-over region setting section for setting a hand-over region among the plurality of adjacent intelligent cameras, and

wherein the operation section sends the object ID of the vehicle from the object ID managing section through the transmission unit to adjacent intelligent camera when the vehicle detected by the respective intelligent cameras moves into a hand-over region; and

wherein the intelligent cameras are connected to each other via a wired or wireless mesh network.

9. The parking management server of claim 8, wherein in a case in which there is no hand-over region when the vehicle is moving, the operation section sends the object ID of the vehicle, which is received from the object ID managing section, to an adjacent intelligent camera using a tracing function with a Kalman filter.

10. A parking management method comprising:

detecting a vehicle using a vehicle recognizing device or a plurality of intelligent cameras to create information about the vehicle;

sending the created information to a server;

determining whether the vehicle moves into a hand-over region in which visual fields of the plurality of adjacent intelligent cameras overlap; and

sending information about the vehicle to another intelligent camera which monitors the hand-over region, when the vehicle moves into the hand-over region;

wherein the intelligent cameras are connected to each other via a wired or wireless mesh network.

11. The parking management method of claim 10, further comprising sending an object ID of the vehicle, which is received from an object ID managing section, to other intelligent camera using a tracing function with a Kalman filter, in a case in which the vehicle is out of a visual field of the intelligent camera that detects the vehicle while the vehicle moves into a region having no hand-over region.