Participants: Francois Bremond, Florent Fusier, Valery Valentin, Monique Thonnat.
AVITRACK was a IST-FP6 European project in collaboration with Silogic S.A. Toulouse (FR), University of Reading (UK), CCI Aeroport Toulouse Blagnac (France), Fedespace (France), Tekever LDA, Lisbon (Portugal), ARC Seibersdorf research GMBH, Wien (Austria), Technique Universities, Vienna (Austria), IKT (Norway) and Euro Inter (Toulouse France). This 2-year project was started in February 2004 and ended in March 2006. During this project, we have developed algorithms to recognize the servicing activities around parked aircrafts in an apron area monitored by eight cameras in Toulouse airport (France). Activities may be simple events involving one mobile object like the arrival or the departure of ground vehicles or complex scenarios like refueling or luggage loading.
Figure 1.
Airport apron site in Toulouse. |
The goal of the AVITRACK project was the recognition of recorded complex activities for airport apron monitoring.
Figure 2.
Airport Apron Monitoring : outdoor scenes with complex interactions between humans, ground vehicles, and aircrafts. |
We have modeled complex video events involving several vehicles and
people operating around the vehicles interacting with each
other. These events refer to activities containing several basic
activities corresponding to the different steps of the whole
operation. The complexity of video events can be illustrated by the
detailed description of the ``Front Unloading Operation''. This
operation consists of unloading the baggage containers of the aircraft
through its front right door. The scenario model is complex and
involves many physical objects, composite components, and temporal
constraints.
Figure 3.
Site observed by 8 cameras. |
The system was able to recognize 21 basic video events, 8 video
events involving the Ground Power Unit (GPU), 8 video events involving the Tanker, 3 video
events involving the Aircraft, 3 video events involving the Tow
Tractor, 3 video events involving the Conveyor, and 12 video events
involving the Loader and the Transporter, so a total number of 58
video events. These video events and their complexity demonstrate
both the system effectiveness and
flexibility. Thanks to this project, we have shown that
automatic video system can monitor an airport apron.
Figure 4.
Parked aircraft monitoring in Toulouse: Unloading Front Operation
(see mpg 6.6M) . |