Determining activity patterns in retail spaces through video analysis

Retail establishments want to know about traffic flow and patterns of activity in order to better arrange and staff their business. A large number of fixed video cameras are commonly installed at these locations. While they can be used to observe activity in the retail environment, assigning personnel to this is too time consuming to be valuable for retail analysis. We have developed video processing and visualization techniques that generate presentations appropriate for examining traffic flow and changes in activity at different times of the day. Taking the results of video tracking software as input, our system aggregates activity in different regions of the area being analyzed, determines the average speed of moving objects in the region, and segments time based on significant changes in the quantity and/or location of activity. Visualizations present the results as heat maps to show activity and object counts and average velocities overlaid on the map of the space. 2009 IEEE.

Determining activity patterns in retail spaces through video analysis Conference Paper