FPGA based system prototype for face location and recording of people getting on a public transport bus

Assault and robbery on the public transport is a social problem. Almost every day, people lose possessions and, in some cases, thieves or citizens get hurt or even die, in the process. In Mexico, attempts to reduce or prevent crime include vigilance by armed agents [1] and video cameras on public transport [2]. This work contributes to crime reduction and/or prevention on public transport by taking photographic records of people as they get on the bus, using an FPGA based system with camera and Secure Digital (SD) storage. An FPGA is used as the processing device which contains all the necessary logic to obtain the images from the camera, process them to locate the face, extract face region and store them into a SD media using an uncompressed BMP file. For face area location single channel image was used to extract regional attributes and their interregional relationship, resulting in a face detection algorithm with tolerance to skin tones and light conditions.