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Real-time bi-directional people counting using an RGB-D camera

Wahyu Rahmaniar (Department of Electrical Engineering, National Central University, Taoyuan, Taiwan)
W.J. Wang (Department of Electrical Engineering, National Central University, Taoyuan, Taiwan)
Chi-Wei Ethan Chiu (Issa Technology, Taoyuan, Taiwan)
Noorkholis Luthfil Luthfil Hakim (Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering, National Central University, Taoyuan, Taiwan)

Sensor Review

ISSN: 0260-2288

Article publication date: 23 September 2021

Issue publication date: 13 October 2021

161

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to propose a new framework and improve a bi-directional people counting technique using an RGB-D camera to obtain accurate results with fast computation time. Therefore, it can be used in real-time applications.

Design/methodology/approach

First, image calibration is proposed to obtain the ratio and shift values between the depth and the RGB image. In the depth image, a person is detected as foreground by removing the background. Then, the region of interest (ROI) of the detected people is registered based on their location and mapped to an RGB image. Registered people are tracked in RGB images based on the channel and spatial reliability. Finally, people were counted when they crossed the line of interest (LOI) and their displacement distance was more than 2 m.

Findings

It was found that the proposed people counting method achieves high accuracy with fast computation time to be used in PCs and embedded systems. The precision rate is 99% with a computation time of 35 frames per second (fps) using a PC and 18 fps using the NVIDIA Jetson TX2.

Practical implications

The precision rate is 99% with a computation time of 35 frames per second (fps) using a PC and 18 fps using the NVIDIA Jetson TX2.

Originality/value

The proposed method can count the number of people entering and exiting a room at the same time. If the previous systems were limited to only one to two people in a frame, this system can count many people in a frame. In addition, this system can handle some problems in people counting, such as people who are blocked by others, people moving in another direction suddenly, and people who are standing still.

Keywords

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the iSSA technology team for their help to test the performance of the method in this paper.

Citation

Rahmaniar, W., Wang, W.J., Chiu, C.-W.E. and Hakim, N.L.L. (2021), "Real-time bi-directional people counting using an RGB-D camera", Sensor Review, Vol. 41 No. 4, pp. 341-349. https://doi.org/10.1108/SR-12-2020-0301

Publisher

:

Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2021, Emerald Publishing Limited

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