Patent ID: 7701482

Claim:
An inter-mobile unit movement classification method of processing time series pictures to classify a movement between mobile units in at least one of said pictures, comprising: detecting, with a processor, a feature amount of a relative movement of a second mobile unit with respect to a first mobile unit as an observation amount to store a time series of said observation amounts as an observation series; calculating, with the processor, a similarity of said observation series to a reference series, said reference series including designated previously recorded observation series of inter-mobile unit movement; and classifying, with the processor, a movement of said second object with respect to said first mobile unit according to a value of said similarity, wherein said observation amounts each include: a first scalar obtained by quantizing an amount associated with both a relative velocity V of said second mobile unit with respect to said first mobile unit and a distance d between said first and second mobile units; and a second scalar obtained by quantizing a relative position vector of said second mobile unit with respect to said first mobile unit; and said first scalar is a value obtained by quantizing V·f(d), where f(d) is a monotone decreasing function of said distance d.