Communications: electrical – Condition responsive indicating system – Specific condition
Reexamination Certificate
2002-07-11
2003-07-15
Mullen, Jr., Thomas J (Department: 2633)
Communications: electrical
Condition responsive indicating system
Specific condition
C348S143000, C348S152000, C348S155000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06593852
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to security monitoring systems and, more particularly, to a security monitoring system that uses trajectories in a way to establish abnormal behavior and triggers an appropriate alarm in response thereto.
2. Prior Art
Security monitoring systems of the prior art, particularly residential security systems, utilize a box that monitors contact sensors for doors and windows and one or more infra-red sensors for area monitoring. When a contact is triggered or an infra-red sensor triggers, an alarm is sounded and a signal is sent via a data link such as a phone line to a central monitoring site. The central monitoring site typically initiates a set of phone calls, to the homeowner, to work, and/or to a designated neighbor to determine if the alarm signal was due to an unauthorized intruder or just to an accidental triggering by a family member or other authorized occupant of the structure.
If the alarm signal cannot be resolved by the phone calls, it is passed to the local police department. 95% of the calls passed to the police department turn out to be “false alarms” in the sense that they were not due to an unauthorized intruder.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
Therefore it is an object of the present invention to provide a security monitoring system which reduces the number of false alarms inherent in the prior art security monitoring systems.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide a security monitoring system that achieves the above objective while reducing the dependency of a central monitoring site to authenticate the validity of an alarm signal.
Accordingly, a security monitoring system is provided. The security monitoring system comprises: at least one camera for monitoring a path of an individual inside and/or outside a structure; a recorder for recording the monitoring of the individual; trajectory analysis means for computing a trajectory of the path of the individual from the recorded monitoring; comparison means for comparing the trajectory against known trajectories; and an alarm system for transmitting an alarm signal based on the comparison. Preferably, the at least one camera comprises a camera for each of an entrance, exit, and one or more rooms of the structure and the at least one camera is a video camera where the recorder records video segments of the path of the individual inside and/or outside the structure. More preferably, the alarm system transmits the alarm signal if the trajectory does not match one of the known trajectories and does not transmit the alarm signal if the trajectory does match one of the known trajectories.
In a preferred implementation of the security monitoring system of the present invention, the system further comprises: a database for storing image data for each authorized individual of the structure; and a recognition system for comparing images of the individual from the at least one camera with the stored image data in the database and for determining if the individual is one of the authorized individuals. The stored image data in the database are preferably face images in which case the recognition system is a face recognition system. In the preferred implementation, the alarm system transmits the alarm signal if the trajectory does not match one of the known trajectories and the individual is determined not to be one of the authorized individuals and does not transmit the alarm signal if the trajectory does match one of the known trajectories or the individual is determined to be one of the authorized individuals.
Also provided is a method for monitoring a structure. The method comprises the steps of: monitoring a path of an individual inside and/or outside the structure; recording the monitoring of the individual; computing a trajectory of the path of the individual from the monitoring; comparing the trajectory against known trajectories; and determining whether to transmit an alarm signal based on the comparison. The computing step preferably comprises computing the trajectory of the individual based on spatial and/or timing information derived from the monitoring. More preferably, the determining step comprises transmitting the alarm signal if the trajectory does not match one of the known trajectories and not transmitting the alarm signal if the trajectory does match one of the known trajectories.
In a preferred implementation of the method of the present invention, the method further comprises the steps of: storing image data for each authorized individual of the structure; and comparing images of the individual from the at least one camera with the stored image data in the database and for determining if the individual is one of the authorized individuals. In the preferred implementation, the determining step comprises transmitting the alarm signal if the trajectory does not match one of the known trajectories and the individual is determined not to be one of the authorized individuals and not transmitting the alarm signal if the trajectory does match one of the known trajectories or the individual is determined to be one of the authorized individuals.
In a yet more preferred implementation of the methods of the present invention, if the determining step determines that the trajectory does not match one of the known trajectories and the individual is determined to be one of the authorized individuals, the method further comprises the step of adding the trajectory to the known trajectories.
REFERENCES:
patent: 4249207 (1981-02-01), Harman et al.
patent: 4758823 (1988-07-01), Berruyer et al.
patent: 5657076 (1997-08-01), Tapp
patent: 5831669 (1998-11-01), Adrain
patent: 5966074 (1999-10-01), Baxter
patent: 5982418 (1999-11-01), Ely
patent: 6054928 (2000-04-01), Lemelson et al.
patent: 6069653 (2000-05-01), Hudson
patent: 6069655 (2000-05-01), Seeley et al.
patent: 6188318 (2001-02-01), Katz et al.
patent: 6441734 (2002-08-01), Gutta et al.
patent: 2223614 (1990-04-01), None
patent: 2343945 (2000-05-01), None
patent: 11-328405 (1999-11-01), None
Rowley, H.A., et al., “Human Face Detection in Visual Scenes”, advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 8, Proceedings of the 1995 Conference, pp. 875-881, 1996.
Rowley, H.A., et al., “Rotation Invariant Neural Network-Based Face Detection”, Proceedings, 1988 IEEE Computer Society Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, pp. 38-44, 1998.
Raja, Y., et al., “Segmentation and Tracking Using Colour Mixture Models”, Computer Vision—ACCV '98, Third Asian Conference on Computer Vision, Hong Kong, China, Jan. 1998, Proceedings, vol. 1.
Lee, C.H., et al., “Automatic Human Face Location In A Complex Background Using Motion And Color Information”, Pattern Recognition, vol. 29, No. 11, pp. 1887-1889, 1996.
Gutta, S., et al., “Face Surveillance”, Sixth International Conference on Computer Vision, The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc., pp. 646-651.
Stauffer, C., “Automatic hierarchical classification using time-based co-occurrences”, IEEE Computer Society Technical Committee on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, vol. 2, pp. 333-339.
Grimson, W.E.L., et al., “Using adaptive tracking to classify and monitor activities in a site”, Proceedings 1988, IEEE Computer Society Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, pp. 22-29, 1998.
Brodsky Tomas
Gutta Srinivas
Mullen, Jr. Thomas J
Thorne Gregory L.
LandOfFree
Intruder detection through trajectory analysis in monitoring... does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this patent.
If you have personal experience with Intruder detection through trajectory analysis in monitoring..., we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and Intruder detection through trajectory analysis in monitoring... will most certainly appreciate the feedback.
Profile ID: LFUS-PAI-O-3025842