Privacy-Preserving Person Detection via Area State Masking
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing monitoring systems struggle to accurately determine the number of individuals and their behavior in crowded areas from moving images, leading to increased user burden when analyzing long periods of footage, as current techniques fail to distinguish between single and multiple people effectively.
Innovation Solution
A monitoring device and method that employs a person image analyzer to detect individuals, determine area states based on positional information, and generate mask images corresponding to these states, allowing users to easily identify the number of people and their behavior through distinct mask images with adjustable transparency and attributes.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If a person area detected from moving images is changed to a specific mask image and displayed, then customer privacy is protected and people can be easily identified from the background, but it becomes impossible to determine whether there is one person or multiple people when they overlap in the image
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies different colors to mask images representing different area states. Single-person areas are displayed with one color while multi-person overlapping areas are displayed with another color, enabling users to visually distinguish between different occupancy states while maintaining privacy protection through mask images
Solution Approach 2:
The patent changes the transparency parameter of mask images based on area state. Different transparency levels are applied to mask images representing different numbers of people, allowing users to perceive the number of people through transparency variations while still protecting individual identities
2Productivity
If captured moving images are analyzed to determine people's behavior, then marketing analysis and service improvement can be achieved, but the user burden increases significantly when analyzing long periods of footage
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts key information about area states (number of people, presence of groups) from the captured moving images and represents them through simplified mask images. This extraction process converts complex visual analysis into easily interpretable graphical representations, reducing the time users need to spend analyzing long periods of footage
Solution Approach 2:
The patent performs preliminary analysis of the captured images to determine area states before presenting the information to users. By pre-processing the images to identify and classify different occupancy states, the system prepares the data in advance, significantly reducing the time users need to spend on manual analysis
Data Source
AI summary
A monitoring device is provided with a person image analyzer which has a person detector which detects a person from captured moving images and acquires positional information which relates to a person area, and an area state determinator which determines an area state which indicates the state of people in the person area based on the positional information, a mask image setter which sets the mask image which corresponds to the area state, and a moving image output controller which generates and outputs output moving images where the person area is changed to the mask image which corresponds to the area state based on the positional information and the area state which are output from the person image analyzer.