Automated counting of pedestrians

Recent developments in automatic building management systems and in road traffic monitoring systems have highlighted a need for accurate real time data relating to occupancy and flow of pedestrians in relatively unconstrained physical areas. In buildings where constrained pedestrian flow is possible to arrange either light beams or turn stiles have been used to count people, but in less constrained areas, counting has been achieved by some manual means i.e. hand counting of live or recorded scenes. The ESPRIT PEDMON (PEDestrian MONitoring) project is focused on the development of technologies to enable the automated counting of pedestrians in unconstrained areas, with the target of producing a cost effective real time demonstration at the projects conclusion. A number of mechanisms are being investigated within the project and image processing is taking a leading role in the development of wide area monitoring and counting systems. This report will describe the image processing work performed by the authors in fulfillment of the project.