Method of detecting and tracking groups of people
First Claim
1. A method of detecting groups of individuals within a number of people, comprising:
- visually recording movement of the people over time by generating a series of images of a scene;
detecting the presence of the individuals in the images;
tracking movement of the individuals to determine their respective trajectories; and
analyzing the trajectories to determine the existence of the groups of individuals, wherein individuals in each of the groups;
i) move together after another group has completed a transaction and ii) exit the scene together after having completed their own transaction.
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Accused Products
Abstract
A computer-interfaced camera system identifies and tracks groups of socially interrelated people. The system can be used, for example, to track people as they wait in a checkout line or at a service counter. In a preferred implementation, each recorded camera frame is segmented into foreground regions containing several people. The foreground regions are further segmented into individuals using temporal segmentation analysis. Once an individual person is detected, an appearance model based on color and edge density in conjunction with a mean-shift tracker is used to recover the person'"'"'s trajectory. Groups of people are determined by analyzing inter-person distances over time.
128 Citations
23 Claims
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1. A method of detecting groups of individuals within a number of people, comprising:
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visually recording movement of the people over time by generating a series of images of a scene; detecting the presence of the individuals in the images; tracking movement of the individuals to determine their respective trajectories; and analyzing the trajectories to determine the existence of the groups of individuals, wherein individuals in each of the groups;
i) move together after another group has completed a transaction and ii) exit the scene together after having completed their own transaction. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 22)
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13. A method for use with a single checkout lane, comprising:
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camera recording people in the checkout lane, thereby generating a series of images; resolving individual persons within the images; and determining relative distances between the persons over time to identify shopping groups of individuals who are together in the checkout lane, the shopping groups being respective sets of people who check out together as a group, the shopping groups in the single checkout lane checking out at different times. - View Dependent Claims (14, 15, 18, 19, 20, 21, 23)
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16. A computer readable memory medium having computer-executable program instructions thereon for carrying out the steps of:
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visually recording movement of people over time by generating a series of images of a scene; detecting the presence of individuals in the images; tracking movement of the individuals to determine their respective trajectories; and analyzing the trajectories to determine the existence of groups of individuals, wherein individuals in each of the groups;
i) move together after another group has completed a transaction and ii) exit the scene together after having completed their own transaction.
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17. A computer readable memory medium having computer-executable program instructions thereon for carrying out the steps of:
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camera recording people in a single checkout lane, thereby generating a series of images; resolving individual persons within the images; and determining relative distances between the persons over time to identify shopping groups of individuals who are together in the checkout lane, the shopping groups being respective sets of people who check out together as a group, the shopping groups in the single checkout lane checking out at different times.
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Specification