Detecting Moving Object Using Background Subtraction Algorithm in FPGA

Image and video processing applications tend to be real time constraints. Applications like visual surveillance, traffic monitoring, vehicle tracking, autonomous navigation, computer vision etc. has the basic requirement of identifying moving object in real time. Hardware based approaches are well suited for real time motion detection as they results in high performance and low cost. For rapid development of real time motion detection systems, we propose hardware architecture for motion detection based on the background subtraction algorithm, which is implemented in FPGAs. The steps involved in the process are: (a) a grey level background image is stored in an SRAM memory in FPGA, (b) color reduction is applied to both the background and current images, (c) Both filtered images are then subtracted using image subtraction (d) the gravity center of the object of resultant image is calculated and sent to a PC (via RS-232 interface) (e) Sobel edge detection algorithm is used to identify object's edges. Identifying object's edge could be extended by classifying objects based on their shapes.