Claims
- 1. A method for dynamically identifying a badge in a sequence of images of a scene acquired by a camera, each image in the sequence including a plurality of pixels, each pixel having a color and an intensity, comprising:detecting a boundary of the badge; fitting an ellipse to the boundary; distorting pixels inside the ellipse to a circular form; identifying colored segments from the distorted pixels; and associating a unique identity with each badge according to the colored segments.
- 2. The method of claim 1 wherein the border pixel having a border color and an intensity greater than a first threshold, and the adjacent pixels having the border color and an intensity greater than a second threshold, where the first threshold is greater than the second threshold.
- 3. The method of claim 1 further comprising:scanning the pixels of each image in a left-to-right and top-to-bottom order.
- 4. The method of claim 1 further comprising:following pixels in the connected region in a forward and left direction to detect the inner boundary.
- 5. The method of claim 2 wherein each pixel of each image has a color value Cp=(Rp,Gp,Bp) and the border color is Ct=(Rt,Gt,Bt), and further comprising:determine a unit three-vector cp=Cp/mag(Cp), where mag(Cp) is a magnitude of Cp; determining a unit three-vector ct=Ct/mag(Ct) of the border color; and determine if a dot product D=cp·ct is greater than a threshold τ to determine if a particular pixel has the border color.
- 6. The method of claim 1 wherein a plurality of cameras acquire concurrently a plurality of sequences of images of a plurality of scenes, and further comprising:tracking the badge in the plurality of scenes.
- 7. The method of claim 6 further comprising:providing feedback via an output depending on a location of the badge in the scene.
- 8. The method of claim 1 wherein the badge is attached to an individual.
- 9. The method of claim 1 wherein multiple badges are concurrently and dynamically identified in the scene.
- 10. The method of claim 1 further comprising:maintaining a database of information associated with each unique identity; and providing feedback via an output based on the associated information.
- 11. The method of claim 1 wherein the badge is attached to an object.
- 12. The method of claim 11 wherein the object is stationary.
- 13. The method of claim 11 wherein the object is moving.
CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATION
This is a continuation-in-part of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/377,556, now U.S. Pat. No. 6,315,197 filed on Aug. 19, 1999 by Beardsley.
US Referenced Citations (9)
Foreign Referenced Citations (1)
Number |
Date |
Country |
WO 0004711 |
Jan 2000 |
WO |
Continuation in Parts (1)
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Number |
Date |
Country |
Parent |
09/377556 |
Aug 1999 |
US |
Child |
09/628461 |
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US |