Visual and Acoustic Surveillance and Monitoring
University of Maryland

Title of Effort: Visual and Acoustic Surveillance and Monitoring

Principal Investigators

• Larry Davis
• Rama Chellappa
• Yaser Yacoob
• Qinfen Zhang

Technical Staff

• Margrit Betke
• David Harwood
• Sandor Fejes
• Ismail Hariatoglu

Technical Area: Visual Surveillance and Monitoring

Project Description

• Technical Objectives
• Approach
• Military/Battlefield relevance
• Demonstrations scheduled

Project accomplishments

• Publications
• W4 - a PC based real time system for detection and tracking of people in monochromatic video. W4 is a real time system that detects and tracks people and their parts (heads, hands, feet). It operates on a dual processor Pentium and analyzes monochromatic video sequences from either visible or IR sensors. W4 employs powerful shape and motion models to detect people and to track them through the 3D world. Recent work, done in collaboration with SRI, has resulted in a stereo version of W4.
  1. Powerpoint presentation describing W4
  2. Video examples of W4 in action! .
• A projective flow field approach to independent motion detection. A fundamental problem in surveillance is being able to detect moving objects from a moving sensor. We have developed a novel approach to this problem based on an analysis of what we call projected flow fields. These flow fields allow us to employ powerful geometric cues to the presence of independent motion. Robustness is increased through the use of temporal and spatial filters. Examples shows below include both airborne and ground based video, with some sequences having very large variations in depth and large fields of view. Very small independently moving objects are detected with very low false alarm rates.
  1. Powerpoint presentation describing independent motion detection
  2. Several frames from a Predator sequence
  3. Video examples

  Other VSAM related links

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