Real-time Demonstration of the Framework for Event Detection in a Parking Lot

The demonstration presents the operator console of the framework for detecting events in a parking lot. The console application connects safely through the Internet to the running framework installed in Gdansk, Poland, receives video streams and event data from it and allows data visualization. The installation consists of multiple cameras, including fixed and PTZ ones. PTZ cameras are able to follow moving objects automatically. The place and time of vehicles stopping in a parking lot is the main event detected by the framework. Other events include detection of vehicles stopping outside of a parking place, persons entering/leaving a building or walking along the road and detection of vehicle leaving and entering the building. 1. FRAMEWORK DESCRIPTION A prototype video surveillance installation covering a part of the parking lot around an office building in Gdansk, Poland, has been established. The installation contains 8 fixed cameras with different orientations in relation to the ground, covering a total number of 54 parking places. The installation is supplemented with 2 PTZ cameras. Sample images from cameras can be seen in Fig. 1 and 2. The framework is able to detect various events in video streams from multiple cameras placed in a parking lot. Detection of parking vehicles is the most important one. This includes identification of the parking time, parking place and identification of the vehicle. Additionally, the system detects a few supplementary events that are useful to a parking lot operator:  vehicle stopping on a road, outside of any parking place,  detecting persons entering or leaving a building,  counting vehicles entering or leaving a parking lot. The framework architecture is fully distributed, which means that nodes of the framework formed by image processing servers, operator consoles and the central server may be placed anywhere in the world, provided that the network connection (LAN, Internet) is available. An important aspect of the proposed system is the issue of data transmission. A layered approach was devised, based on TCP/IP protocols suite, which enables the sensitive data to be transferred by means of open Internet, regardless of the presence of Network Address Translators or firewalls which typically interfere with establishment of multimedia communication sessions. At the foundation of the developed solution lays the Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP). Its use provides an added value of security and message integrity layer (based on TLS standard), authorization, addressing scheme and a container for information structuring within self-describing, XMLbased messages. Furthermore, XMPP grants access to a plethora of the protocol extensions including so-called Jingle protocol, which is a tool for establishing multimedia communication sessions. This forms the core of the system’s audio and video streaming functionality. In fact Jingle is a session-control (signaling) protocol while the actual multimedia data transfer is performed out-of-band of XMPP connection due to performance reasons. For this purpose encrypted Realtime Transfer Protocol (RTP) sessions are utilized. As a consequence, the initiation of multimedia streaming may be problematic in the presence of NAT devices or firewall on the route between transmission endpoints. Therefore, an additional proxy service has been implemented within the system, which allows for the efficient multimedia transmission between any connected terminals regardless of their network conditions.