Detecting retail events using moving edges

We present a moving object recognition system based on the characteristics of the object´s edges. Our approach is formulated as an edge detection problem within two consecutive frames of a video sequence. The framework is evaluated in a retail environment for detecting dollies entering or leaving the back door of a store and in opening or closing a cashier´s cash drawer. The system is trained manually with pre-recorded video sequence of a dolly entering a building and a cash drawer opening and closing. Once trained, the system is shown to be able to detect dollies and cash drawer actions reliably. The framework can be used to detect objects of any defined edge characteristics as a part of an event detection system for small retail businesses.