Automatic Passenger Counting (APC)

Scope and Functionality

Recently, there has been an increased demand for Automatic Passenger Counting (APC) solutions. These solutions can be widely applied in business, security and public transportation

• Security: correct estimation of the number of people in a building or on the floor can be critical for rescue operation success
• Retail and public enterprises: customer attendance statistics, which can be compared with sales by period in order to make right decisions on business development
• For transportation:
  • Compare passenger count with the number of tickets sold
  • Conduct passenger traffic analysis during peak hours in order to adjust the schedule and volume of traffic
• For offices: premise occupancy and employee and visitor movements analysis

What we offer

Currently, there are three main techniques for counting people flow using:

• Infrared line crossing sensors
• Floor pressure sensors
• CCTV cameras (computer vision techniques)

Infrared sensors — have low accuracy in case of a significant flow of people in the counting zone (simultaneous crossing of the beam by several people)
Pressure sensors require time consuming installation and expensive equipment that can be easily damaged
Computer vision techniques — provide greater opportunities and higher accuracy at lower cost. Unlike other methods, they provide the possibility of differentiation (for example, people and from other moving objects, such as carts, buggies, bicycles, etc.). Softailor offers this solution

Automatic Passenger Counting (APC) system was developed as an industrial solution for assessing the intensity of passenger traffic using modern computer vision techniques

The possibility of mass installation in public places and in transport results in high functional requirements:

• Ability to work with low-resolution video (640x480)
• Ability to work on inexpensive computers, including single‑board Minimum hardware requirements:

Minimum hardware requirements:

• 4 core processor
• 4 GB RAM
• 32 GB free storage

As a data source for flow analysis System can use:

• Video stream from a connected stereo camera
• Video archive

The system provides high (more than 90%) level of precision, is quite simple to install and operate
APC is a proprietary development of our company and does not incur any license fees. There is a possibility of product support in Russian market