Remi Depommier

Content-based browsing of video sequences

A novel methodology to represent the contents of a video sequence is presented. The representation is used to allow the user to rapidly view a video sequence in order to find a particular point within the sequence and/or to decide whether the contents of the sequence are relevant to his or her needs. This system, referred to as content-based browsing, forms an abstraction to represent each shot of the sequence by using a representative frame, or an Rframe, and it includes management techniques to allow the user to easily navigate the Rframes. This methodology is superior to the current techniques of fast forward and rewind because rather than using every frame to view and judge the contents, only a few abstractions are used. Therefore, the need to retrieve the video from a storage system and to transmit every frame over the network in its entirety no longer exists, saving time, expenses, and bandwidth.

An embedded real-time vision system for 24-hour indoor/outdoor car-counting applications

We describe an embedded vision system, which integrates a Web-cam quality CMOS imaging chip with a RISC processor, to perform real-time car-counting functions in the indoor and outdoor environment. The challenge of this application, especially for the outdoor environment, is to develop vision algorithms for day and night, and during the light-transition periods (i.e., dawn and dusk). The vision system also needs to accommodate a tremendous range of illumination change (from sunny summer to snowy winter). Finally, we report briefly the result of an outdoor system we deployed in Germany since June 2003. The entire system consists of a network of 13 embedded vision systems covering a parking facility over 1 square kilometer. The vision-network has been in daily use for the employee parking guidance.