USB camera pedestrian counting

Abstract

[Abstract]: The aim of this project was to implement a pedestrian counting system using a PC and USB Camera as the primary hardware. The software developed will not be ready for complete deployment due to time limitations and requires further development before it is reliable and accurate enough to be used for pedestrian counting. However, the object motion detector has been fully developed and is ready to be incorporated into future projects and currently runs at 26 frames per second. The current program captures frames in real time from a USB camera. A motion image is created using an approximate median filter. A motion image is then generated using differencing. Moving objects are clustered using a region growing algorithm. These motion objects are then displayed on screen. Tracking at this stage consists of simple size and position matching combined with aging of the objects to increment a pedestrian counter. Further development of the project will involve enhanced tracking methods such as region splitting, active model fitting, velocity and position estimates using predictor correctors and shadow removal. Difference image averaging should be applied to improve the results and robustness of the motion detector which is currently noisy. Other improvements would be the transition of the program to a C language to improve speed along with multithreading, greater camera control and enhanced statistics reporting.