Proceedings of the 2007 IEEE
International Conference on Mechatronics and Automation
August 5 - 8, 2007, Harbin, China
Security Door System Using Human Tracking Method
with Laser Range Finders
Jae Hoon Lee, Yong-Shik Kim, Bong Keun Kim and
Kohtaro Ohba
Ubiquitous Functions Research Group
AIST
Tsukuba, Ibaraki-ken, Japan
{jh.lee, ys.kim, bk.kim, k.ohba}@aist.go.jp
Abstract Recently, tracking and counting people are
requested for the security purpose. In this paper, we propose a
method to track and count people with Laser Range Finders. A
method to extract the walking human from the sensor data is
introduced. Multi-target model and Kalman filter based
estimation are employed to track the human movement and
count the number of people. The proposed method is applied to a
novel system to monitor the entrance area and to filter out the
trespasser who enters the door without identification.
Experiments for various cases are performed to verify the
usefulness of developed proto-type system.
Index Terms Security System, Laser Range Finder, Human
Tracking.
I. INTRODUCTION
Security systems in order to prevent trespasser coming into
guard area have been developed actively and used lots of areas
recently. However, the current entrance control systems have
limitation that cannot block un-identified trespassers coming
into the door with another identified person. In order to solve
the problem, a new method using tracking technology with
Laser Range Finder is proposed in this paper.
To monitor the current position and the motion history of
humans in the space of interest is one of the essential issues of
ambient intelligence technology including service and security
for human daily life [9,10]. So far, motion analysis with vision
data using camera has been a general method to collect the
motion information of moving objects including human.
However, the performance of vision-based technique is very
sensitive to the condition of camera setting such as view point
and angle of camera, image pixels and so on. Moreover the
common change of illumination and weather condition are
another major obstacle to the reliability and robustness of
vision system. Applications of vision-based object tracking
have been confined to the extraction of a small number of
objects in limited environments till now [1].
Laser Range Finder has been developed as a new sensor
technology measuring range distance from sensor to target
object. Recently, its applications in the field of detecting and
tracking moving objects are going on increasing [3,4,6-8]. In
the sense of people tracking for ambient intelligence, the
method using Laser Range Finder has many merits in data
manipulation, robustness to environmental condition, the
number of tracking people, resolution in distance information,
1-4244-0828-8/07/$20.00 2007 IEEE. 2060
Hirohiko Kawata, Akihisa Ohya and
Shinichi Yuta
Department of Intelligent Robotics
University of Tsukuba
Tsukuba, Ibaraki-ken, Japan
{ohya, yuta}@roboken.esys.tsukuba.ac.jp
and so on. Shulz et al. investigated a method to make use of
Laser Range Finder for people tracking with sample-based
joint probabilistic data association filter [3]. Zhao et al.
proposed a method to track people with Laser Range Finders
scanning the human feet in indoor environment [4, 6]. Lee et
al. investigated a Kalman filtering based algorithm to track
walking people using a robot in motion with Laser Range
Finder which scans the human legs. Most of previous
researches were focused on a method to track moving humans
using Laser Range Finders. However, the example of security
application has been rarely found. So this paper suggests a
new approach to exploit people tracking technique using Laser
Range Finder for development of security door system.
As a previous work for security application, the authors
have investigated a method to monitor people who pass
through the entrance area by scanning human waist [8]. In this
paper, security door system to prevent trespasser is developed.
Multi-target tracking technology of the previous study is
utilized in development of security door system. The main
purpose of this research is to improve the performance of
security gate. The principal difference of the security door
system from a general automatic door is the existence of
identification device such as RFID or fingerprints recognition.
The open problem of the existing security door system with
identification device is that a trespasser passing through the
door, while another certificated person goes through it, cannot
be detected and controlled. To cope with this problem, the
proposed system employed a method to track every people
passing through the door always. Therefore, in the case that
there appears any trespasser, the system can provide alarm or
proper information. Thus multiple Laser Range Finders set
into the environment are utilized as device to detect people
pass through the entrance. Multi-target model and Kalman
filter-based estimation method [2] are employed to track the
human movement and count the number of people in the front
of door. Experiments for various cases of tracking and
counting people are performed to verify the usefulness of the
proposed approach.
The organization of this paper is as follows. We explain a
method how to detect human with multiple Laser Range
Finder in Section II. Kalman filtering based tracking algorithm
with multi-target model is discussed in Section III. In Section
IV, system development and experiments will be shown to
demonstrate the effectiveness of the developed system. Finally
we draw conclusions.
II. HUMAN DETECTING ALGORITHM WITH LASER RANGE
FINDERS
A. Laser Range Finder
Human tracking using camera system has been known
widely as a traditional method to monitor the movement of
human. However, vision method treating image information
from camera has well-known drawbacks of small view angle,
image pixels, and illumination effect etc.
Recently, Laser Range Finder has been developed as a
novel sensor for the area of automation and robotics. Laser
Range Finder can scan wider areas than a general camera.
Besides, by using Laser Range Finder, we can obtain the
direct distance information between sensor to object or
environment.
Figure 1 displays the Laser Range Finder which is
employed in this research [5]. It was developed as a compact
type sensor by HOKUYO Corporation recently. The scanning
angle of the sensor is 240 degrees with the resolution of 0.35
degree. It operates with 100msec sampling time. Its maximum
distance is 4,095mm with the resolution of 1%. The design of
sensor is very compact, and its weight and dimension are 160g
and 50mm x 50mm x 70mm, respectively [11].
Fig. 1 Laser Range Finder (URG-04LX; HOKUYO Corp.)
Fig. 2 Data acquisition using Laser Range Finder
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B. Object Detection by Laser Range Finder
Figure 2 displays the conceptual diagram of the sensor
data from Laser Range Finder including the information of
environment and object. The sensor is fixed at somewhere
around the region of interest in the environment. It scans the
environment including human objects with the laser-ray
rotating on a horizontal plane. So the resultant data is
represented with the angle and the distance of the reflecting
point in the environment; wall or some objects. It could be
translated as global position information with respect to the
global coordinate system. Unfortunately, the sensor data
includes not only the information of the target, namely human
object, but also the environmental information. Therefore, we
need to separate the information of the objective target from
the raw sensor data.
In this research, we extracted the data of objective targets
by comparing the current sensor data with the environmental
data that was saved in the initial state with no human object in
the region of interest. We call this process as clustering. The
environmental data saved in the initial sate is denoted by the
small blanked circles (), and the current data is denoted by
the cross marks (X), respectively. By substituting the distance
of these two types of data, we can extract some cluster
representing a part of human object. Because we scanned the
height of human waist (about 80cm), the extracted cluster
includes the position information of some part of human waist.
However, according to the various conditions between the
sensor and walking human, especially the direction of human,
not only waist but also arm could be detected and formed as a
cluster. Namely, the extracted cluster could be made from not
only waist but also arm. To eliminate the cluster of arm, we
classified it by considering the geometric difference between
waist and arm.
Next to the clustering process, we need to compute the
center position of the cluster. We assume that the geometry of
the human cluster is similar to circle in this paper. So the
shape of the human cluster is considered as an arc as displayed
in Fig. 2. Where p1 and p2 denote the start and end point of
the cluster. The center position of human body is computed by
considering geometry of cluster with the following equation.
x x p 2 rc cos( + )
=y + (1)
y p 2 rc sin( + )
where rc denote the radius of a circle representing human
waist. Besides, denotes the angle between the line p 2 p1
and the global axis X G , and denotes the angle between the
lines p 2 p1 and p 2 pc , respectively.
C. Detecting Multiple Human Objects using Multiple Laser
Range Finders
When we track multiple targets by Laser Range Finder,
some objects cannot be detected by sensor because of being
occluded by other objects, so to speak, occlusion. To deal with
occlusion problem, two Laser Range Finders are employed in
this paper. The positions of sensors are decided by some
experiments and consideration of the circumstances of the
region of interest. However, if we use two Laser Range
Finders, some objects could sometimes be detected by both
sensors as displayed in Fig. 3. Besides, according to the
configuration of sensors and the geometric difference of
clusters, there could be a little error between the positions
computed by two sensors. For example, Obj. 3 in Fig. 3 is
detected by both sensors. However, some error is observed
between two positions computed by the data from both
sensors, which are denoted by and . Therefore, if the
distance between the centers of two clusters is smaller than the
average diameter of human waist, they are considered as one
cluster.
Fig. 3 Detecting multi-human object using multi-SOKUIKI sensors
Fig. 4 Life cycle of human objects
III. TRACKING AND COUNTING ALGORITHM
A. Life Cycle of Human Object
Fig. 4 describes the life cycle of human objects moving in
scanning area. Region of interest is represented as a rectangle
with solid line. Two circles out of region of interest represent
two Laser Range Finders. The curved lines with arrow denote
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the historical paths of the human objects. The human objects
move in scanning area with their random velocities. Some of
them are detected continuously (tracking) and some of them
may not be detected sometimes because of occlusion between
them (occlusion). And some objects come into the scanning
area from time to time (appearance), and some of them go out
and wont be detected (disappearance). Therefore, the objects
in scanning area go through and repeat the process of
appearance, tracking, occlusion, and disappearance.
B. Modeling of Human Object
We used a discrete human model in which human object is
considered as a moving point on the ground. Following
human model is utilized in Kalman Filtering to estimate the
state of human object. The state vector x consists of position
and velocity of human body center such that
xt = ( pxt pty vxt v yt )T , (2)
where the superscript t denotes the number index of human
object in the scanning area. The system model is designed as
xt (k + 1) = F t x t (k ) + wt (k + 1) , (3)
where w and k describe the modeling error and the discrete
time, respectively. The state transition matrix is given as
1 0 T 0
0 1 0 T
Ft = . (4)
0 0 1 0
0 0 0 1
The measurement equation is given as
z t (k + 1) = H t x t (k + 1) + t (k + 1) , (5)
where represents the measurement error and the
observation matrix is given as
1 0 0 0
Ht = . (6)
0 1 0 0
C. Tracking and Counting Method
Tracking procedure is designed as the following
sequences. Whole sequences are iterated per every scanning
time. In this research, it is assumed that we track people in
general walking, excepting irregular motions, and the waist
part of human body is scanned.
1) Data Clustering: Firstly, it is needed to extract the data
of walking people from the data of Laser Range Finder. We
divided the scanning data into effective clusters according to
subtracting environmental data from current scanning data.
Besides, the size of cluster is also considered with the general
width of human waist.
 2) Finding Body Center Position: Next, as described in
Section II, the center position of human body is computed by
considering the geometric feature of cluster.
3) Eliminating Extra Body Candidates: When we employ
more than one sensor, candidates of the number of sensors
could be detected for one human object. Therefore, extra body
candidates are eliminated according to the distance between
two body candidates. If the center positions of two body
candidates exist in an area of one human body, one of them
will be eliminated. Usually, for one human object, two body
candidates are created from two Laser Range Finders.
However, because of occlusion, sometimes just one body
candidate also could be detected.
4) Connecting Body Candidates to Current Human
Objects: Human objects having been tracked until previous
scanning are connected to current body candidates to be
utilized as measurements for position estimation process.
Here, we employed a hybrid scheme including the sense of
minimum distance and the validation region which can be
represented by the following equation.
(k + 1) S 1 (k + 1) (k + 1) . (7)
interest, control the door, capture the image around the door,
and make alarm in the case of emergency.
Generally, security door just consists of ID check device
and automatic door. Well-known method to use that door is
firstly to check ID and then step in the door if certificated.
RFID or fingerprint recognition is usual certification method.
However, there are additional components in the proposed
system such as Laser Range Finders. They scan the
surrounding of door and detect people who pass through door.
Fig. 6 displays the diagram of operating process for the
proposed system. If a person who enters the door is
certificated with his RFID card and inputs the number of
people entering together, then the system counts the number
of people in the region of interest and checks whether both
numbers are the same or not. If the input number is
coincident with the count number from the system, the door
will be opened. While they pass through the door, the system
monitors whether any trespasser without certification comes
in together or not. The system will alarm or take a picture to
save the scene in the case that any trespasser exists in the
region of interest.

The innovation (k + 1) = z t z t denotes the position error

between the sensor measurement z t and the state estimation
prediction z t , which is computed by the filter. S (k + 1) is the
covariance matrix of the innovation vector (k + 1) .
5) Creating New Human Object: New human object are
created from the rest of current body candidates which were
not connected to the existing human objects. It denotes an
object in the life cycle of appearance.
6) Update Human Objects: The states of human objects
are updated using human model with the measured position
data given from the previous procedures. Some human objects
without new body candidate position from current scanning
time are also updated just with prediction. If a new body
candidate has not been connected to a human object as new
scanning data for a while, it means occlusion state. If Fig. 5 Architecture of the proposed system
occlusion time of a human object exceeds a given value, we
consider it as disappearance and delete it. After updating by
using a Kalman filtering with sensor measurement, the system
counts the number of human objects in the region of interest.
For checking whether any trespasser exists or not, that number
will be compared with the number given from certification
step.
7) Going to the Next Scanning

IV. SECURITY DOOR SYSTEM

A. Configuration of the System
Fig. 5 displays the architecture of the proposed system
which consists of automatic door, identification device, two
Laser Range Finders, and main computer. The main computer
receives the scanning data from the two sensors and the Fig. 6 Diagram of operating process
personal data for identification process from the identification
device. Besides, it could be also used to monitor the region of

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Fig. 7 Experimental result of tracking people
B. Experiments with Testbed System
In order to evaluate the performance of the proposed
system, people tracking experiments were carried out. Fig.
7 displays successive scenes of experimental scenario that
two persons came into the region of interest, after than, the
other person also come into there. The left photographs
depict a top view of a passage where the experimental
testbed was set up. And right figures show the monitoring
animation which displays the scanning data from sensors
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and tracking situation.
(a) Scene of experiment
(b) Scene of monitoring animation
Fig. 8 Experimental result of tracking people with RFID
It was assumed that there is a door in the right part of Fig.
7. Thus people come from the left side and come into the door
of the right side of the testbed. Here, the region of interest is
defined as a rectangular area in front of the door whose
dimension is 2m x 2m. Two URG sensors were attached in the
upper and lower part of the region of interest, and their height
is about 80cm. Both sensors were connected to the main PC
by USB communication.
Through many times of experiments, it has been known
that the case when the number of people to pass the region of
interest is smaller than or equal to four, the system tracks and
counts well the human objects. However, when the number of
the persons in the tracking area is more than five, the tracking
performance gets worse [8]. It is considered that the more the
number of people is, the larger the area of occlusion, where
sensors cannot detect human objects well.
Experiments collaborating with RFID not only for
tracking people but also identifying the personal ID are also
carried out. Fig. 8 (a) displays a scene of tracking experiment
with RFID. Fig. 8 (b) shows the monitoring scene of the
system when two people to enter the door were identified by
RFID card. It is observed that the RFID codes of both people
are successfully recognized and correctly assigned to each
human object. When a man contacts his RFID card to the
reader for identification, the system recognizes the personal ID
and which person contacted the RFID reader, by considering
the positional relationship between the RFID reader and
human objects having been tracked. We could observe that the
proposed system also showed good performance of tracking
and identification in long time experiments of various
situations.
D. Development of the Security Door System
A real system with the proposed methodology is
developed and installed in the entrance of our laboratory as
displayed in Fig. 9. Fig. 10 shows the monitoring program for
tracking and counting people to enter the door. It consists of
monitoring window showing tracking situation and scanning
data, operating panel to control condition of the system, and
the number of people in the tracking area. The system is in the
state of check for long time operation in various situations.
Fig. 9 Photograph of the developed security door system
Fig. 10 The monitoring program for the security door system
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V. CONCLUSION
In this paper, a new algorithm to track and count people is
proposed, and a security door system using the proposed
method to detect trespasser around entrance was developed.
Multiple Laser Range Finders are employed to detect the
people passing a door. Multi-target tracking technology with
Kalman filter was applied to track human objects in motion
and count their number in the region of interest. Motion model
and geometric feature of human is also considered for
detecting the walking humans. Experiments for various cases
of tracking and counting people are performed to verify the
availability for security application. Also, a real system is
developed and installed into the real environment.
As a future work, an approach using additional sensors
such as camera or extra Laser Range Finders could be a
solution to extend the proposed method to applications to
count more people.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors acknowledge T. Mori, and N. Shimaji of
Hokuyo Corporation for their collaboration in preparing this
paper and supporting experimental devices.
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