A High-Accuracy, Cost-Effective People Counting Solution Based on Visual Depth Data

Abstract

Real-time people counting has become a critical task due to its applications in a wide range of areas such as security, safety, statistics and commerce, implying that the demand for systems that offer such a capability has risen. Consequently, it is important to make it possible for the public to afford a precise, robust people counting system. Therefore, we aim to propose an efficient solution that requires low-cost hardware. Hopefully the people counting product derived from this solution will have a reasonable purchase price when put up for sale. Following the minimal hardware requirement, our system only relies on a depth camera plus a cheap embedded processor. A detection/tracking module forms the core of the underlying theoretical approach whose main functionality is to detect and count any entry/exit occurrences through a generic entrance. Our testing and validation experiments reveal that the proposed system yields a highly satisfactory accuracy rate and can compete closely with similar technologies currently available on the market.