Patent ID: 6654047
Filing Date: 2003-11-25
Classification: G06Q,H04N

Abstract:
A method of acquiring information on a traffic line of persons representing routes taken by the persons, comprising:sensing existence of respective persons and extracting images of the respectively sensed persons from images picked up by a plurality of image pickup devices which are provided in respective predetermined positions in a facility and which respectively pick up images of persons entering the facility, leaving the facility, and moving within the facility; creating feature vectors unique to the respectively sensed persons by image-processing the extracted images of the persons entering the facility, leaving the facility, and moving within the facility; adding information including an identification code and an entrance time to each of the feature vectors created with respect to the persons entering the facility to thereby create entrance information, and then storing the entrance information; collating the feature vectors created with respect to the persons leaving the facility and moving within the facility with the feature vectors contained in said stored entrance information to thereby discriminate respective same persons; storing traffic-line information including the identification codes of the respectively discriminated same persons, positions of the image pickup devices picking up images of the same persons, and times at which the image pickup devices have picked up the images of the same persons; and acquiring traffic-line information with a same identification code from the stored traffic-line information, determining respective positions of the same persons based on the positions of the image pickup devices picking up the images of the same persons, and providing a route of each person moving within said facility.