Detection of thrown objects in indoor and outdoor scenes

— We present a novel technique for the detection of hand-thrown objects in a video sequence. Our method runs in real-time and was designed to be used as a component in a deployed surveillance system. We detect regions of fast motion that fit certain size, compactness and speed criteria, and use the expectation maximization algorithm to detect objects on parabolic trajectories over a short time window. The system was shown to successfully detect thrown objects of various sizes in a large test set of indoor and outdoor videos.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2007
• Where: IROS
• Authors: Evan Ribnick, Stefan Atev, Nikolaos Papanikolopoulos, Osama Masoud, Richard M. Voyles
• Keywords: Deployed Surveillance System, Expectation Maximization Algorithm, Hand-thrown Objects, IROS 2007, Robotics