Fast object detection using dimensional based features for public street environments

Abstract

Modern object recognition algorithms have very high precision. At the same time, they require high computational power. Thus, widely used low-power IoT devices, which gather a substantial amount of data, cannot directly apply the corresponding machine learning algorithms to process it due to the lack of local computational resources. A method for fast detection and classification of moving objects for low-power single-board computers is shown in this paper. The developed algorithm uses geometric parameters of an object as well as scene-related parameters as features for classification. The extraction and classification of these features is a relatively simple process which can be executed by low-power IoT devices. The algorithm aims to recognize the most common objects in the street environment, e.g., pedestrians, cyclists, and cars. The algorithm can be applied in the dark environment by processing images from a near-infrared camera. The method has been tested on both synthetic virtual scenes and real-world data. The research showed that a low-performance computing system, such as a Raspberry Pi 3, is able to classify objects with acceptable frame rate and accuracy.