Advanced thermal camera based system for object detection on rail tracks

Abstract

In this paper, an advanced thermal camera-based system for detection of objects on rail tracks is presented. Developed system is powered by advanced image pro-cessing algorithm, in order to achieve greater reliability and robustness, and tested on set of infrared images captured at night conditions. The goal of this sys-tem is to detect objects on rail tracks and next to them and estimate distances be-tween camera stand and detected objects. For that purpose, different edge detec-tion methods are tested, and finally Canny edge detector is selected for rail track detection and for determination of region of interest, further used for analysis in object detection process. In determined region of interest, region-based segmen-tation is used for object detection. For estimation of distances between camera stand and detected objects, homography based method is used. Validation of es-timated distances is done, in respect to real measured distances from camera stand to objects (humans) involved in experiment. Distances are estimated with a maximum error of 2%. System can provide reliable object detection, as well as distance estimation, and for improved robustness and adaptability, artificial in-telligence tools can be used.