Hierarchical Task Network Planning with Common-Sense Reasoning for Multiple-People Behaviour Analysis

Safety on public transport is a major concern for the relevant authorities. We address this issue by proposing an automated surveillance platform which combines data from video, infrared and pressure sensors. Data homogenisation and integration is achieved by a distributed architecture based on communication middleware that resolves interconnection issues, thereby enabling data modelling. A common-sense knowledge base models and encodes knowledge about public-transport platforms and the actions and activities of passengers. Trajectory data from passengers is modelled as a time-series of human activities. Common-sense knowledge and rules are then applied to detect inconsistencies or errors in the data interpretation. Lastly, the rationality that characterises human behaviour is also captured here through a bottom-up Hierarchical Task Network planner that, along with common-sense, corrects misinterpretations to explain passenger behaviour. The system is validated using a simulated bus saloon scenario as a case-study. Eighteen video sequences were recorded with up to six passengers. Four metrics were used to evaluate performance. The system, with an accuracy greater than 90% for each of the four metrics, was found to outperform a rule-base system and a system containing planning alone

Video foreground extraction for mobile camera platforms

Foreground object detection is a fundamental task in computer vision with many applications in areas such as object tracking, event identification, and behavior analysis. Most conventional foreground object detection methods work only in a stable illumination environments using fixed cameras. In real-world applications, however, it is often the case that the algorithm needs to operate under the following challenging conditions: drastic lighting changes, object shape complexity, moving cameras, low frame capture rates, and low resolution images. This thesis presents four novel approaches for foreground object detection on real-world datasets using cameras deployed on moving vehicles.The first problem addresses passenger detection and tracking tasks for public transport buses investigating the problem of changing illumination conditions and low frame capture rates. Our approach integrates a stable SIFT (Scale Invariant Feature Transform) background seat modelling method with a human shape model into a weighted Bayesian framework to detect passengers. To deal with the problem of tracking multiple targets, we employ the Reversible Jump Monte Carlo Markov Chain tracking algorithm. Using the SVM classifier, the appearance transformation models capture changes in the appearance of the foreground objects across two consecutives frames under low frame rate conditions. In the second problem, we present a system for pedestrian detection involving scenes captured by a mobile bus surveillance system. It integrates scene localization, foreground-background separation, and pedestrian detection modules into a unified detection framework. The scene localization module performs a two stage clustering of the video data.In the first stage, SIFT Homography is applied to cluster frames in terms of their structural similarity, and the second stage further clusters these aligned frames according to consistency in illumination. This produces clusters of images that are differential in viewpoint and lighting. A kernel density estimation (KDE) technique for colour and gradient is then used to construct background models for each image cluster, which is further used to detect candidate foreground pixels. Finally, using a hierarchical template matching approach, pedestrians can be detected.In addition to the second problem, we present three direct pedestrian detection methods that extend the HOG (Histogram of Oriented Gradient) techniques (Dalal and Triggs, 2005) and provide a comparative evaluation of these approaches. The three approaches include: a) a new histogram feature, that is formed by the weighted sum of both the gradient magnitude and the filter responses from a set of elongated Gaussian filters (Leung and Malik, 2001) corresponding to the quantised orientation, which we refer to as the Histogram of Oriented Gradient Banks (HOGB) approach; b) the codebook based HOG feature with branch-and-bound (efficient subwindow search) algorithm (Lampert et al., 2008) and; c) the codebook based HOGB approach.In the third problem, a unified framework that combines 3D and 2D background modelling is proposed to detect scene changes using a camera mounted on a moving vehicle. The 3D scene is first reconstructed from a set of videos taken at different times. The 3D background modelling identifies inconsistent scene structures as foreground objects. For the 2D approach, foreground objects are detected using the spatio-temporal MRF algorithm. Finally, the 3D and 2D results are combined using morphological operations.The significance of these research is that it provides basic frameworks for automatic large-scale mobile surveillance applications and facilitates many higher-level applications such as object tracking and behaviour analysis

Monocular Camera Viewpoint-Invariant Vehicular Traffic Segmentation and Classification Utilizing Small Datasets

The work presented here develops a computer vision framework that is view angle independent for vehicle segmentation and classification from roadway traffic systems installed by the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT). An automated technique for extracting a region of interest is discussed to speed up the processing. The VDOT traffic videos are analyzed for vehicle segmentation using an improved robust low-rank matrix decomposition technique. It presents a new and effective thresholding method that improves segmentation accuracy and simultaneously speeds up the segmentation processing. Size and shape physical descriptors from morphological properties and textural features from the Histogram of Oriented Gradients (HOG) are extracted from the segmented traffic. Furthermore, a multi-class support vector machine classifier is employed to categorize different traffic vehicle types, including passenger cars, passenger trucks, motorcycles, buses, and small and large utility trucks. It handles multiple vehicle detections through an iterative k-means clustering over-segmentation process. The proposed algorithm reduced the processed data by an average of 40%. Compared to recent techniques, it showed an average improvement of 15% in segmentation accuracy, and it is 55% faster than the compared segmentation techniques on average. Moreover, a comparative analysis of 23 different deep learning architectures is presented. The resulting algorithm outperformed the compared deep learning algorithms for the quality of vehicle classification accuracy. Furthermore, the timing analysis showed that it could operate in real-time scenarios

Detecting, tracking and counting people getting on/off a metropolitan train using a standard video camera

The main source of delays in public transport systems (buses, trams, metros, railways) takes place in their stations. For example, a public transport vehicle can travel at 60 km per hour between stations, but its commercial speed (average en-route speed, including any intermediate delay) does not reach more than half of that value. Therefore, the problem that public transport operators must solve is how to reduce the delay in stations. From the perspective of transport engineering, there are several ways to approach this issue, from the design of infrastructure and vehicles to passenger traffic management. The tools normally available to traffic engineers are analytical models, microscopic traffic simulation, and, ultimately, real-scale laboratory experiments. In any case, the data that are required are number of passengers that get on and off from the vehicles, as well as the number of passengers waiting on platforms. Traditionally, such data has been collected manually by field counts or through videos that are then processed by hand. On the other hand, public transport networks, specially metropolitan railways, have an extensive monitoring infrastructure based on standard video cameras. Traditionally, these are observed manually or with very basic signal processing support, so there is significant scope for improving data capture and for automating the analysis of site usage, safety, and surveillance. This article shows a way of collecting and analyzing the data needed to feed both traffic models and analyze laboratory experimentation, exploiting recent intelligent sensing approaches. The paper presents a new public video dataset gathered using real-scale laboratory recordings. Part of this dataset has been annotated by hand, marking up head locations to provide a ground-truth on which to train and evaluate deep learning detection and tracking algorithms. Tracking outputs are then used to count people getting on and off, achieving a mean accuracy of 92% with less than 0.15% standard deviation on 322 mostly unseen dataset video sequences.Sergio A. Velastin is grateful for funding received from the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement N 600371, el Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad (COFUND2013-51509) el Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte (CEI-15-17) and Banco Santander. Rodrigo Fernandez and Sergio A. Velastin gratefully acknowledge the Chilean National Science and Technology Council (Conicyt) for its funding under CONICYT-Fondecyt Regular Grant Nos. 1120219, 1080381 and 1140209 (“OBSERVE”)

Rail Passenger Selective Screening Summit, MTI S-09-01

This publication is an edited transcript of the Rail Passenger Selective Screening Summit, which was co-sponsored by MTI and the American Public Transportation Association (APTA) in Chicago, Illinois on June 18, 2009, during APTA´s annual Rail Conference. The workshop was moderated by Brian Michael Jenkins, director, Mineta Transportation Institute\u27s National Transportation Security Center of Excellence (NTSCOE). Speakers included Bruce R. Butterworth, co-author, Selective Screening of Rail Passengers; Greg Hull, president, American Public Transportation Association (APTA); Paul MacMillan, chief of police, Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, Transit Police Department; Ron Masciana, deputy chief, Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA), New York; Jesus Ojeda, security coordinator, Southern California Regional Rail Authority; Ed Phillips, operations deputy, Office of Security, Amtrak; and John P. Sammon, assistant administrator, Transportation Sector Network Management, Transportation Security Administration (TSA

iABACUS: A Wi-Fi-Based Automatic Bus Passenger Counting System

Since the early stages of the Internet-of-Things (IoT), one of the application scenarios that have been affected the most by this new paradigm is mobility. Smart Cities have greatly benefited from the awareness of some people’s habits to develop efficient mobility services. In particular, knowing how people use public transportation services and move throughout urban infrastructure is crucial in several areas, among which the most prominent are tourism and transportation. Indeed, especially for Public Transportation Companies (PTCs), long- and short-term planning of the transit network requires having a thorough knowledge of the flows of passengers in and out vehicles. Thanks to the ubiquitous presence of Internet connections, this knowledge can be easily enabled by sensors deployed on board of public transport vehicles. In this paper, a Wi-Fi-based Automatic Bus pAssenger CoUnting System, named iABACUS, is presented. The objective of iABACUS is to observe and analyze urban mobility by tracking passengers throughout their journey on public transportation vehicles, without the need for them to take any action. Test results proves that iABACUS efficiently detects the number of devices with an active Wi-Fi interface, with an accuracy of 100% in the static case and almost 94% in the dynamic case. In the latter case, there is a random error that only appears when two bus stops are very close to each other

IEEE Access Special Section Editorial: Big Data Technology and Applications in Intelligent Transportation

During the last few years, information technology and transportation industries, along with automotive manufacturers and academia, are focusing on leveraging intelligent transportation systems (ITS) to improve services related to driver experience, connected cars, Internet data plans for vehicles, traffic infrastructure, urban transportation systems, traffic collaborative management, road traffic accidents analysis, road traffic flow prediction, public transportation service plan, personal travel route plans, and the development of an effective ecosystem for vehicles, drivers, traffic controllers, city planners, and transportation applications. Moreover, the emerging technologies of the Internet of Things (IoT) and cloud computing have provided unprecedented opportunities for the development and realization of innovative intelligent transportation systems where sensors and mobile devices can gather information and cloud computing, allowing knowledge discovery, information sharing, and supported decision making. However, the development of such data-driven ITS requires the integration, processing, and analysis of plentiful information obtained from millions of vehicles, traffic infrastructures, smartphones, and other collaborative systems like weather stations and road safety and early warning systems. The huge amount of data generated by ITS devices is only of value if utilized in data analytics for decision-making such as accident prevention and detection, controlling road risks, reducing traffic carbon emissions, and other applications which bring big data analytics into the picture