Spatial analysis applications

[Talos77]

Hi,

I'm interested in applying RP to a variety of spatial analysis problems. A key component for these projects would be a camera/sensor that can detect how many people enter and leave a designated space.

The simplest solution would seem to be some kind of laser sensor that, when tripped, adds +1 to the count of the number of people in a space -- but I wonder how such a system would be able to perceive whether a person is entering or exiting. Can anyone recommend equipment/an approach?

Thanks in advance.

Talos77

[ghans]

Use two, one "behind" the other.


ghans

[Ravenous]

I don't think a simple break-beam would work well, because people will often walk in two or three together. But in theory, as ghans says, two beams a few inches apart will tell you the direction - if one breaks before the other.

I know large shopping centres and the like generate their "footfall" statistics (how many people walk past, or go into, each store) by analysing CCTV images. They use commercial systems to do this, probably not cheap.

I guess the computer vision open source experts might have some ideas on how to detect moving objects appearing from the left or from the right of the image. Only bit I've heard about directly is blob detection or better, face detection - though no idea if there's software available to keep track of many subjects at a time. You might get a few leads searching the CSI camera thread...

[Talos77]

Thanks!

Blob detection is along the lines of what I want. Break-lasers would require very narrow bottlenecks.