Illumination invariant stationary object detection

A real-time system for the detection and tracking of moving objects that becomes stationary in a restricted zone. A new pixel classification method based on the segmentation history image is used to identify stationary objects in the scene. These objects are then tracked using a novel adaptive edge orientation-based tracking method. Experimental results have shown that the tracking technique gives more than a 95% detection success rate, even if objects are partially occluded. The tracking results, together with the historic edge maps, are analysed to remove objects that are no longer stationary or are falsely identified as foreground regions because of sudden changes in the illumination conditions. The technique has been tested on over 7 h of video recorded at different locations and time of day, both outdoors and indoors. The results obtained are compared with other available state-of-the-art methods

Detection of Parked Vehicles using Spatio-temporal Maps

This paper presents a video-based approach to detect the presence of parked vehicles in street lanes. Potential applications include the detection of illegally and double-parked vehicles in urban scenarios and incident detection on roads. The technique extracts information from low-level feature points (Harris corners) to create spatiotemporal maps that describe what is happening in the scene. The method neither relies on background subtraction nor performs any form of object tracking. The system has been evaluated using private and public data sets and has proven to be robust against common difficulties found in closed-circuit television video, such as varying illumination, camera vibration, the presence of momentary occlusion by other vehicles, and high noise levels. © 2011 IEEE.This work was supported by the Spanish Government project Movilidad y automocion en Redes de Transporte Avanzadas (MARTA) under the Consorcios Estrategicos Nacionales de Investigacion Tecnologica (CENIT) program and the Comision Interministerial Ciencia Y Tecnologia (CICYT) under Contract TEC2009-09146. The Associate Editor for this paper was R. W. Goudy.Albiol Colomer, AJ.; Sanchis Pastor, L.; Albiol Colomer, A.; Mossi García, JM. (2011). Detection of Parked Vehicles using Spatio-temporal Maps. IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems. 12(4):1277-1291. https://doi.org/10.1109/TITS.2011.2156791S1277129112

A semantic-guided and self-configurable framework for video analysis

The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00138-011-0397-xThis paper presents a distributed and scalable framework for video analysis that automatically estimates the optimal workflow required for the analysis of different application domains. It integrates several technologies related with data acquisition, visual analysis tools, communication protocols, and data storage. Moreover, hierarchical semantic representations are included in the framework to describe the application domain, the analysis capabilities, and the user preferences. The automatic determination of the analysis workflow is performed by selecting the most appropriate tools for each domain among the available ones in the framework by means of exploiting the relations between the semantic descriptions. The experimental results in the video surveillance domain demonstrate that the proposed approach successfully composes optimal workflows for video analysis applications.This work has been partially supported by the Spanish Government (TEC2011-25995), by the Consejería de Educación of the Comunidad de Madrid and by The European Social Fund

Efficient and effective automated surveillance agents using kernel tricks

Many schemes have been presented over the years to develop automated visual surveillance systems. However, these schemes typically need custom equipment, or involve significant complexity and storage requirements. In this paper we present three software-based agents built using kernel machines to perform automated, real-time intruder detection in surveillance systems. Kernel machines provide a powerful data mining technique that may be used for pattern matching in the presence of complex data. They work by first mapping the raw input data onto a (often much) higher dimensional feature space, and then clustering in the feature space instead. The reasoning is that mapping onto the (higher-dimensional) feature space enables the comparison of additional, higher order correlations in determining patterns between the raw data points. The agents proposed here have been built using algorithms that are adaptive, portable, do not require any expensive or sophisticated components, and are lightweight and efficient having run times of the order of hundredths of a second. Through application to real image streams from a simple, run-of-the-mill closed-circuit television surveillance system, and direct quantitative performance comparison with some existing schemes, we show that it is possible to easily obtain high detection accuracy with low computational and storage complexities

Video analytics for security systems

This study has been conducted to develop robust event detection and object tracking algorithms that can be implemented in real time video surveillance applications. The aim of the research has been to produce an automated video surveillance system that is able to detect and report potential security risks with minimum human intervention. Since the algorithms are designed to be implemented in real-life scenarios, they must be able to cope with strong illumination changes and occlusions. The thesis is divided into two major sections. The first section deals with event detection and edge based tracking while the second section describes colour measurement methods developed to track objects in crowded environments. The event detection methods presented in the thesis mainly focus on detection and tracking of objects that become stationary in the scene. Objects such as baggage left in public places or vehicles parked illegally can cause a serious security threat. A new pixel based classification technique has been developed to detect objects of this type in cluttered scenes. Once detected, edge based object descriptors are obtained and stored as templates for tracking purposes. The consistency of these descriptors is examined using an adaptive edge orientation based technique. Objects are tracked and alarm events are generated if the objects are found to be stationary in the scene after a certain period of time. To evaluate the full capabilities of the pixel based classification and adaptive edge orientation based tracking methods, the model is tested using several hours of real-life video surveillance scenarios recorded at different locations and time of day from our own and publically available databases (i-LIDS, PETS, MIT, ViSOR). The performance results demonstrate that the combination of pixel based classification and adaptive edge orientation based tracking gave over 95% success rate. The results obtained also yield better detection and tracking results when compared with the other available state of the art methods. In the second part of the thesis, colour based techniques are used to track objects in crowded video sequences in circumstances of severe occlusion. A novel Adaptive Sample Count Particle Filter (ASCPF) technique is presented that improves the performance of the standard Sample Importance Resampling Particle Filter by up to 80% in terms of computational cost. An appropriate particle range is obtained for each object and the concept of adaptive samples is introduced to keep the computational cost down. The objective is to keep the number of particles to a minimum and only to increase them up to the maximum, as and when required. Variable standard deviation values for state vector elements have been exploited to cope with heavy occlusion. The technique has been tested on different video surveillance scenarios with variable object motion, strong occlusion and change in object scale. Experimental results show that the proposed method not only tracks the object with comparable accuracy to existing particle filter techniques but is up to five times faster. Tracking objects in a multi camera environment is discussed in the final part of the thesis. The ASCPF technique is deployed within a multi-camera environment to track objects across different camera views. Such environments can pose difficult challenges such as changes in object scale and colour features as the objects move from one camera view to another. Variable standard deviation values of the ASCPF have been utilized in order to cope with sudden colour and scale changes. As the object moves from one scene to another, the number of particles, together with the spread value, is increased to a maximum to reduce any effects of scale and colour change. Promising results are obtained when the ASCPF technique is tested on live feeds from four different camera views. It was found that not only did the ASCPF method result in the successful tracking of the moving object across different views but also maintained the real time frame rate due to its reduced computational cost thus indicating that the method is a potential practical solution for multi camera tracking applications

Abandoned object detection in long-term video-surveillance

Due to recent events, global security concern is significantly increasing in our society. This area of concern is directly connected with the growing demand of video surveillance systems, mainly in public and crowded scenarios, such as railway stations, due to the potential risk they present. In order to avoid the arduous manual task of supervising a video surveillance system, automatic analysis and detection of this kind of events is the challenging task to be achieved. Although diverse systems trying to reach this goal have been proposed in the literature there is a lack of evaluation within this field. An end-to-end configurable system for abandoned and stolen object detection has been designed and developed by integrating available techniques. This systems integrates several algorithms in each module of the system, thus it allows the evaluation of several state-of-the art techniques combinations. An evaluation protocol considering short and long-term sequences has been designed by classifying available datasets and analysis evaluation metrics. A graphical user interface has been developed allowing the algorithms and parameters selection and adjustment for each stage of the system, as well as displaying the results. In addition, a new different system integrating recent and innovative state of the art proposals has been proposed.Debido a los acontecimientos recientes, la preocupación por la seguridad global está incrementando en nuestra sociedad. Este motivo de preocupación está directmente realacionado con la creciente demanda de sistemas de vídeo vigilancia, principalmente en espacios publicos y transitados, tales como estaciones de tren, debido al potencial riesgo que presentan. Con el fin de evitar la ardua tarea manual de supervisar un sistema de video vigilancia, surge la difícil tarea de analizar y detectar automáticamente eventos como el robo y abandono de objetos. Aunque se han propuesto diversos sistemas tratando de alcanzar esta meta, aún se carece de un marco de evaluación en este área. En este trabajo se ha diseñado y desarrollado un sistema completo configurable para la detección de eventos abandonados y robados integrando las técnicas disponibles en el estado del arte. El sistema integra diferentes algoritmos en cada uno de sus módulos, haciendo posible la evaluación de diferentes combinaciones. Se ha diseñado también un protocolo de evaluación para secuencias de corto y largo plazo, mediante la clasificación de las mismas y el análisis de métricas de evaluación. Se ha desarrollado una interfaz gráfica de usuario que permite la selección y ajuste de los algoritmos y parámetros para cada módulo, así como la visualización de los resultados de cada etapa. Además, se ha propuesto un nuevo sistema que integra diferentes técnicas recientes del estado del arte