bytes : Still looking

18 January 1997

It is one thing to use video surveillance to pick out moving
objects, and quite another to detect things that do not move—such as
abandoned parcels and luggage. Yet that is what security experts on the lookout
for bombs planted in a public place often wish to do. Danny Gibbins, from
the Cooperative Research Centre for Sensor Signal and Information Processing in
Adelaide, has come to their aid with a software package known as a background
change detector. It analyses footage from security cameras, and sorts out what
part of the picture represents unchanging background. The other objects in the
picture then become features of interest. If one of these features, a bag for
instance, does not move for a specified time, the program draws attention to it
by outlining it in a colour coded to the amount of time it has not moved. The
CRC has successfully tested the background change detector at Adelaide Railway
Station, and has already shown it to several security companies. Gibbins says
there could well be other applications—spotting stationary cars broken
down in traffic, for example. More information can be obtained from the CRC’s
website at http//www.cssip.edu.au