JPH0138272B2 - - Google Patents

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION The present invention relates to a people detection device that detects the number of people within a detection range using an optical method such as a television camera or energy waves such as ultrasonic waves or electromagnetic waves. Fixed objects such as desks and desks are stored as zero person information.

FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing the configuration of a conventional number of people detection device. Reference numeral 1 in FIG. 1 denotes a transducer, and the transducer 1 is an energy wave transducer composed of a transmitter 1a and a receiver 1b for energy waves such as ultrasonic waves or electromagnetic waves. The direction of the transducer 1 is changed by a scanner 2.

Further, reference numeral 3 denotes a direction detector, and the direction detector 3 detects the direction of the transducer 1 whose direction has been changed by the scanner 2.

On the other hand, the signal received by the receiver 1b is amplified by the amplifier 4, and its output is converted into a binary signal by the binarization circuit 5 and sent to the digital central processing unit 9. There is.

Based on the signal from the digital central processing unit 9, the driver 6 drives the wave transmitter 1a, and energy waves are transmitted from the wave transmitter 1 to generate timing pulses at fixed time intervals. The signal is sent from the timing pulse generation circuit 7 to the digital central processing unit 9.

Depending on the direction of the transducer 1, the detection range storage circuit 8 supplies the maximum value of the output of the timing pulse generation circuit 7 to be counted to the digital central processing unit 9.

The digital central processing unit 9 calculates the number of people within the detection range based on signals from the direction detector 3, the binarization circuit 5, the timing pulse generation circuit 7, the detection range storage circuit 8, etc. Fixed objects 11 such as plants or desks existing inside
(Fig. 2) state information is stored in the zero person information storage circuit 12.
The information is stored via the command unit 13.

The command unit 13 connects the fixed object 1 to the zero person information storage circuit 12.
This command gives a command to store the information of item 1.

Further, 10 indicates a person existing within the detection range, and the fixed object 11 corresponds to a plant, a desk, etc. existing within the detection range.

FIG. 2 is a diagram for explaining the operating principle of the number of people detection device shown in FIG. 1. In FIG. 2, θ indicates the horizontal angle of the transducer 1, and θ indicates the vertical angle. Also, p(x, y) is the detected human 1
0 and the coordinates of the fixed object 11.

FIG. 3 is a video information diagram showing the state of detection of humans and fixed objects within the detection range. In FIG. 3, 10a is a human image processing signal processed by the digital central processing unit 9, and 11a is a fixed object 11 image processing signal.

FIG. 4 shows the signals of each part of the number of people detection device, and S1 in the figure is the output of the driver 6,
This serves as a drive signal to the transmitter 1a. S2
indicates the received signal received by the receiver 1b, and S3
indicates the binary signal output from the binarization circuit, S4 indicates the timing pulse output from the timing pulse circuit 7 to the digital central processing unit 9, and S5 indicates the direction of the transducer 1 output to the scanner 2. The scanning direction change command S6 is a drive command output from the digital central processing unit 9 to the driver 6.

FIG. 5 is a diagram showing fixed objects stored in advance, and FIG. 6 is a diagram showing information detected as a person other than the fixed object. Of these, 11b in FIG. 5 is the fixed object information of the fixed object 11 stored in the zero person information storage circuit 12, and 10b in FIG. Of the fixed object information 11a, only objects different from the fixed object information 11b are valid human detection signals.

Next, the operation of the conventional number of people detection device will be explained. Energy waves are transmitted from a transducer 1 directed in a certain direction, and are received if reflected from a person 10 and a fixed object 11. Received signal S
2 (FIG. 4) is amplified by an amplifier 4, binarized into a binary signal S3 (FIG. 4) by a binarization circuit 5, and read into a digital central processing unit 9.

The direction of the transducer 1, that is, the horizontal angle φ
and the vertical direction angle θ are detected by the direction detector 3 and read into the digital central processing unit 9. The digital central processing unit 9 calculates the timing pulse S4 for counting the time from when the energy wave is transmitted until it is received, the binary signal S3, and the horizontal angle and vertical angle θ from the direction detector 3. Calculate the coordinates p (x, y) of the reflected wave from the human 10,
Remember.

This coordinate p(x, y) is calculated as follows. That is, by counting the timing pulses S4, the time t from when the received reflected wave is transmitted until it is received can be detected, and if the speed of the energy wave is v, then the coordinates p (x, y) is as follows.

x=vt/2cosθ・sin y=vt/2cosθ・cos On the other hand, the digital central processing unit 9 stores the value of the timing pulse S4 to be counted from the horizontal angle and vertical angle θ of the transducer 1 in a detection range storage circuit. Read from timing pulse S4.
When the maximum value to be counted is reached, a scanning direction change command S6 is given to the scanner 2, and counting of timing pulses S4 is stopped.

In this way, after one energy wave transmission/reception process is completed and the transducer 1 is oriented in a different direction,
The same energy wave transmission and reception processing as described above is performed again. However, the values to be counted of the timing pulses S4 read out from the detection range storage circuit 8 to the digital central processing unit 9 are different values because the directions of the transducer 1 are different.

Since the detection range is a rectangular parallelepiped as shown in Figure 2, the horizontal angle and vertical angle θ
If they are different, it is natural that the distance from the transducer 1 to the boundary of the detection range is different.

When the above-mentioned energy wave transmission and reception processing is performed over the entire detection range, for example, when a person 10 and a fixed object 11 are present within the detection range as shown in Fig. 3, the result will be as shown in Fig. 3. Video information 10a and 11
a is obtained.

Of the video information 10a and 11a, fixed information is stored in the zero-person information storage circuit 12 by confirming in advance that there are no humans within the detection range by an installation worker or maintenance worker and operating the command unit 13. The digital central processing unit 9 performs arithmetic processing so that only objects different from the object information 11b are valid, and a detection signal 10b is obtained.

If the number of people is estimated using this detection signal 10b, for example, even if a person 10 and a fixed object 11 exist within the detection range as shown in FIG. Only the information is valid, and the number of people can be accurately detected.

However, it is necessary for the installation worker or maintenance person to confirm in advance that there are no humans within the detection range and to store the fixed object information 11b in the zero-person information storage circuit 12 by operating the command unit 13. be.

For this reason, each time the power of this people detection device is turned on and each time there is a change in the position of the fixed object 11 within the detection range, the installation worker or maintenance person inputs the fixed object information 11b into the zero person information storage circuit. It is necessary to perform an operation to store the information in 12.

The present invention was made to eliminate the above-mentioned drawbacks of the conventional art, and the present invention identifies a fixed object from information stored in a state memory circuit that stores signals of the state of the detection range, and information about the determined fixed object. By storing the fixed object information as zero-person information, installation workers and maintenance personnel can store the fixed object information in the zero-person information storage circuit every time the power to the people detection device is turned on or whenever there is a change in the position of a fixed object within the detection range. It is an object of the present invention to provide a number of people detection device that does not require a memorization operation and can simplify installation and maintenance work.

DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS Hereinafter, embodiments of the number of people detection device of the present invention will be described based on the drawings. FIG. 7 is a block diagram showing the configuration of one embodiment. In FIG. 7, parts that are the same as those in FIG. 1 are given the same reference numerals, and explanation thereof will be omitted, and parts that are different from those in FIG. 1 will be mainly described.

As is clear from comparing FIG. 7 with FIG. 1, in FIG. 7, the transducer 1, scanner 2, direction detector 3, amplifier 4, binarization circuit 5, Driver 6, timing pulse generation circuit 7, detection range storage circuit 8, digital central processing unit 9
The parts shown in FIG. 1 are constructed in exactly the same way as in FIG. 1, and the parts after the reference numeral 14 are mainly different from those in FIG.

That is, 14 in FIG. 7 is a state storage device composed of N state storage circuits 14a to 14n, and 15 is a fixed object discrimination circuit that discriminates a fixed object from the state information stored in the state storage device 14. In the illustrated embodiment, there are four state storage circuits 14a to 14n.

Information on the fixed object discriminated by the fixed object discriminating circuit 15 is stored in the zero person memory circuit 12, and the contents are transferred to the digital central processing unit 9.

Next, the operation of the apparatus for detecting the number of people of the present invention constructed as described above will be explained with reference to FIG. 8 and subsequent figures. FIGS. 8 to 11 each show the state of the detection range stored at regular intervals.

The video information as shown in FIGS. 8 to 11 is stored in the state memory circuits 14a to 14 at predetermined intervals.
stored in n. Here, it is assumed that this predetermined time is set to be long enough for the person once detected to move from the previously detected point when being stored next time.

Specifically, the predetermined time needs to be 10 seconds or 1 minute. In this way, among the video information stored in the state storage circuits 14a to 14n, the fixed object discriminating circuit 15 determines that the video information that has been detected at the same location a predetermined number of times or more is fixed object information, and this information is stored in zero person. The information is stored in the information storage circuit 12.

Normally, humans move around rather than staying at the same location, and video information of fixed objects shows that humans exist at coordinates (3, 9), (4, 9), and (5, 9), for example, as shown in Figure 11. coordinates (3, 10) unless something occurs that prevents the energy wave from reaching the coordinates (3, 10).
10) The fixed objects present in 10) should always be detected at the same point.

That is, by doing as described above, human image information is ignored as a fixed object, and only real fixed object information is stored in the zero person information storage circuit 12.

Therefore, each time the people detection device is turned on, or each time there is a change in the position of a fixed object within the detection range, the installation worker or maintenance person stores the fixed object information in the zero-person information storage circuit. There is no need to perform any operations. Therefore, installation work and maintenance work can be simplified.

In addition, in this embodiment, the case where the number of people detection device uses energy waves such as ultrasonic waves or electromagnetic waves is shown, but even if the number of people detection device uses an optical method such as a television camera, the zero number information storage circuit or It is obvious that the same effects as the above embodiment can be obtained if the circuit has a circuit corresponding to this.

Furthermore, in the above embodiment, the fixed object discriminating circuit 15 discriminates, among the information stored in the state storage circuits 14a to 14n, objects detected a predetermined number of times or more at the same location as fixed objects; however, this is not the case. It is obvious that the same effect can be obtained even if fixed objects are automatically determined using another method.

As described above in detail, the number of people detection device of the present invention is a number of people detection device that detects the number of people present within a detection range using the optical method of a television camera, ultrasonic waves, or energy waves such as electromagnetic waves. , a plurality of state memory circuits that sequentially store coordinate position information of the detected object obtained by transmitting and receiving energy waves within the detection range at predetermined time intervals, and coordinate positions stored in each of the state memory circuits. A fixed object discrimination circuit is provided which determines that a fixed object is detected when coordinate position information is detected from the same coordinate position a predetermined number of times or more based on the information, and the information determined as a fixed object by this fixed object discrimination circuit is zeroed out. Since it is stored as person information, each time the power is turned on to the people detection device and each time there is a change in the position of a fixed object within the detection range, the installation worker or maintenance person can store the fixed object information. There is no need to perform an operation to store information in the information storage circuit, and installation and maintenance work can be simplified.

[Brief explanation of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing the configuration of a conventional number of people detection device, FIG. 2 is an explanatory diagram for explaining the operating principle of the number of people detection device of FIG. 1, and FIG. 3 is a block diagram showing the configuration of a conventional number of people detection device A video information diagram showing the detection status of people and fixed objects within the detection range, Figure 4 is a diagram showing the signals of each part of the number of people detection device in Figure 1, and Figure 5 is a diagram showing the detection status of people and fixed objects within the detection range.
FIG. 6 is a diagram showing information on fixed objects stored in advance in the number of people detection device shown in FIG. 1, FIG. 6 is a diagram showing information detected as humans other than fixed objects by the number of people detection device of FIG. FIGS. 8 to 11 are block diagrams showing the configuration of one embodiment of the number of people detection device, and are diagrams each showing the state of the detection range stored at fixed time intervals by the number of people detection device of the present invention. 1... Transducer/receiver, 2... Scanner, 3... Direction detector, 4... Amplifier, 5... Binarization circuit, 6...
Driver, 7... Timing pulse generation circuit, 8...
...Detection range storage circuit, 9...Digital central processing unit, 10...Human, 11...Fixed object, 12...
... Zero person information storage circuit, 13 ... Command unit, 14 ...
State memory circuit, 15...Fixed object detection circuit. In addition,
The same reference numerals in the figures indicate the same or corresponding parts.

Claims (1)

[Claims] 1 In a people detection device that detects the number of people present within a detection range using optical means such as a television camera or energy waves such as ultrasonic waves or electromagnetic waves, energy waves are transmitted and received within the detection range at predetermined intervals. a plurality of state memory circuits that sequentially store coordinate position information of a detected object obtained by wave processing; and coordinate position information stored in each of the state memory circuits for a predetermined number of times or more from the same coordinate position. When position information is detected, it is provided with a fixed object discrimination circuit that discriminates this as a fixed object, and a zero person information storage circuit that stores information determined as a fixed object by the fixed object discrimination circuit as zero person information. A device for detecting the number of people.