Determination of class, attributes, and identity of an occupant

A system for determining the class and attributes of an occupant object in an occupancy space, comprising:

• an image capture device for capturing an infra-red image of a plurality of occupant objects in said occupancy space;
• an information digitizer for digitizing infra-red image information of said captured infra-red image to obtain a thermal signature of the occupancy space comprising said occupant objects;
• a thermal signature database for storing thermal signatures of occupant objects, wherein said thermal signature database comprises a binary tree structure describing said class and said attributes of said thermal signatures of said occupant objects;
• and
• an information processor for processing said digitized image information, comprising:
• a thermal signature comparison module configured for identifying said occupant objects in said digitized infra-red image and ascribing shapes to each of said occupant objects;
• said thermal signature comparison module configured for comparing each of said identified occupant objects with said thermal signature database to determine if each of said occupant objects meets a given class and said attributes of said given class;
• said thermal signature comparison module configured for performing a plurality of passes through said binary tree structure in said thermal signature database, said binary tree structure further describing class characteristics and said attributes of said given class, comprising:
• performing a first pass, comprising assigning a probability to each of said occupant objects in said occupancy space, wherein said first pass further comprises assigning a higher probability to an occupant object which meets the class characteristics and the attributes of said given class;
• and
• performing a plurality of other passes, comprising:
• comparing occupant objects having said higher probability against specific class characteristics and specific attributes of said given class;
• and
• utilizing successive image captures in each of said other passes.

A computer program product comprising a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium having computer readable program code embodied thereon, said computer-readable program code comprising:

• a first computer readable program code for capturing an image of a plurality of occupant objects in an occupancy space;
• a second computer readable program code for digitizing image information of said captured infra-red image to obtain a thermal signature of the occupant space comprising said occupant objects;
• a third computer readable program code for determining said class and said attributes of the occupant object;
• and
• said third computer readable program code for identifying said occupant objects in said digitized infra-red image and ascribing shapes to each of said occupant objects;
• said third computer readable program code for comparing each of said identified occupant objects with a thermal signature database to determine if each of said occupant objects meets a given class and said attributes of said given class;
• said third computer readable program code for performing a plurality of passes through a binary tree structure in said thermal signature database, said binary tree structure describing class characteristics and said attributes of said given class, said step of performing said passes comprises:
• said third computer readable program code performing a first pass, comprising assigning a probability to each of said occupant objects in said occupancy space, wherein said first pass further comprises assigning a higher probability to an occupant object which meets the class characteristics and the attributes of said given class;
• and
• said third computer readable program code performing a plurality of other passes, comprising:
• said third computer readable program code comparing occupant objects having said higher probability against specific class characteristics and specific attributes of said given class;
• and
• said third computer readable program code utilizing successive image captures in each of said other passes.