College of Engineering Unit:
Are you a business owner trying to figure out how to well your business is running? Try out out people counting solution! A people counter in a broad sense is a device that allows you to simply count the number of people that walk through an entrance or passageway, but in this context you want to be keeping track of the people that walk into or past the store. Why do you need to count people? By checking the foot traffic around your store you might find that people are more actively shopping at specific times, and as a business owner you can improve scheduling by having staff to work shifts at these designated times to increase the changes an employee has to service a active passerby. You can also play to causality or experiment! By checking whether a specific item is in stock or an advertisement at the time to have caused an increased foot traffic around your establishment, you can effectively make the call to order x number of such items or run more of the advertisement at the right time to hook in more customers. Perhaps you simply want to know the popularity of your business? After all, the more there are around your store more popular it is.
Our people counting solution is the CWTOF depth sensory-based camera. Pioneered and managed by our project partner, Pre-Act Technologies, the software company focused on automotive collision detection, this special camera, implemented with the software designed by us (using the ROS2 tool and image processing libraries i.e. OpenCV), allows us to capture demographic information of the people being counted. The camera assures high accuracy, fast response, and a cost-efficient system considering how few of its components are needed. In comparison to some solutions such as video feed, the demographic data captured with this sensory technology does no infringe on privacy.
Beyond the scope of this project, the camera can also be used for human collision detection systems on cars or even monitor the people inside the cabin of your car! In other words, The possibilities for what this camera can achieve can go further than just people counting. Watch your business grow with this camera!