Tag: webcam

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Video Mosaic on Live Webcam Stream with OpenCV and Numba

What will we cover in this tutorial?

We will investigate if we can create a decent video mosaic effect on a live webcam stream using OpenCV, Numba and Python. First we will learn the simple way to create a video mosaic and investigate the performance of that. Then we will extend that to create a better quality video mosaic and try to improve the performance by lowering the quality.

Step 1: How does simple photo mosaic work?

A photographic mosaic is a photo generated by other small images. A black and white example is given here.

The above is not a perfect example of it as it is generated with speed to get it running smooth from a webcam stream. Also, it is done in gray scale to improve performance.

The idea is to generate the original image (photograph) by mosaic technique by a lot of smaller sampled images. This is done in the above with the original frame of 640×480 pixels and the mosaic is constructed of small images of size 16×12 pixels.

The first thing we want to achieve is to create a simple mosaic. A simple mosaic is when the original image is scaled down and each pixel is then exchanged with one small image with the same average color. This is simple and efficient to do.

On a high level this is the process.

  1. Have a collection C of small images used to create the photographic mosaic
  2. Scale down the photo P you want to create a mosaic of.
  3. For each pixel in photo P find the image I from C that has the closed average color as the pixel. Insert image I to represent that pixel.

This explains the simple way of doing. The next question is, will it be efficient enough to have a live webcam stream processed?

Step 2: Create a collection of small images

To optimize performance we have chosen to make it in gray scale. The first step is to collect images you want to use. This can be any pictures.

We have used photos from Pexels, which are all free for use without copyright.

What we need is to convert them all to gray scale and resize to fit our purpose.

import cv2
import glob
import os
import numpy as np
output = "small-pics-16x12"
path = "pics"
files = glob.glob(os.path.join(path, "*"))
for file_name in files:
    print(file_name)
    img = cv2.imread(file_name)
    img = cv2.resize(img, (16, 12))
    img = cv2.cvtColor(img, cv2.COLOR_BGR2GRAY)
    mean = np.mean(img)
    output_file_name = "image-" + str(mean).replace('.', '-') + ".jpg"
    output_file_name = os.path.join(output, output_file_name)
    print(output_file_name)
    cv2.imwrite(output_file_name, img)

The script assumes that we have located the images we want to convert to gray scale and resize are located in the local folder pics. Further, we assume that the output images (the processed images) will be put in an already existing folder small-pics-16×12.

Step 3: Get a live stream from the webcam

On a high level a live stream from a webcam is given in the following diagram.

This process framework is given in the code below.

import cv2
import numpy as np

def process(frame):
    return frame

def main():
    # Get the webcam (default webcam is 0)
    cap = cv2.VideoCapture(0)
    # If your webcam does not support 640 x 480, this will find another resolution
    cap.set(cv2.CAP_PROP_FRAME_WIDTH, 640)
    cap.set(cv2.CAP_PROP_FRAME_HEIGHT, 480)
    while True:
        # Read the a frame from webcam
        _, frame = cap.read()
        # Flip the frame
        frame = cv2.flip(frame, 1)
        frame = cv2.resize(frame, (640, 480))
        gray = cv2.cvtColor(frame, cv2.COLOR_BGR2GRAY)
        # Update the frame
        updated_frame = process(gray)
        # Show the frame in a window
        cv2.imshow('WebCam', updated_frame)
        # Check if q has been pressed to quit
        if cv2.waitKey(1) == ord('q'):
            break
    # When everything done, release the capture
    cap.release()
    cv2.destroyAllWindows()

main()

The above code is just an empty shell where the function call to process is where the all the processing will be. This code will just generate a window that shows a gray scale image.

Step 4: The simple video mosaic

We need to introduce two main things to create this simple video mosaic.

  1. Loading all the images we need to use (the 16×12 gray scale images).
  2. Fill out the processing of each frame, which replaces each 16×12 box of the frame with the best matching image.

The first step is preprocessing and should be done before we enter the main loop of the webcam capturing. The second part is done in each iteration inside the process function.

import cv2
import numpy as np
import glob
import os

def preprocess():
    path = "small-pics-16x12"
    files = glob.glob(os.path.join(path, "*"))
    files.sort()
    images = []
    for filename in files:
        img = cv2.imread(filename)
        images.append(cv2.cvtColor(img, cv2.COLOR_BGR2GRAY))
    return np.stack(images)

def process(frame, images, box_height=12, box_width=16):
    height, width = frame.shape
    for i in range(0, height, box_height):
        for j in range(0, width, box_width):
            roi = frame[i:i + box_height, j:j + box_width]
            mean = np.mean(roi[:, :])
            roi[:, :] = images[int((len(images)-1)*mean/256)]
    return frame

def main(images):
    # Get the webcam (default webcam is 0)
    cap = cv2.VideoCapture(0)
    # If your webcam does not support 640 x 480, this will find another resolution
    cap.set(cv2.CAP_PROP_FRAME_WIDTH, 640)
    cap.set(cv2.CAP_PROP_FRAME_HEIGHT, 480)
    while True:
        # Read the a frame from webcam
        _, frame = cap.read()
        # Flip the frame
        frame = cv2.flip(frame, 1)
        frame = cv2.resize(frame, (640, 480))
        gray = cv2.cvtColor(frame, cv2.COLOR_BGR2GRAY)
        # Update the frame
        mosaic_frame = process(gray, images)
        # Show the frame in a window
        cv2.imshow('Mosaic Video', mosaic_frame)
        cv2.imshow('Webcam', frame)
        # Check if q has been pressed to quit
        if cv2.waitKey(1) == ord('q'):
            break
    # When everything done, release the capture
    cap.release()
    cv2.destroyAllWindows()

images = preprocess()
main(images)

The preprocessing function reads all the images, converts them to gray scale (to have only 1 channel per pixel), and returns them as a NumPy array to have optimized code.

The process function takes and breaks down the image in blocks of 16×12 pixels, computes the average gray scale, and takes the estimated best match. Notice the average (mean) value is a float, hence, we can have more than 256 gray scale images.

In this example we used 1.885 images to process it.

A result can be seen here.

The result is decent but not good.

Step 5: Testing the performance and improve it by using Numba

While the performance is quite good, let us test it.

We do that by using the time library.

First you need to import the time library.

import time

Then time the actual time the process call uses. New code inserted in the main while loop.

        # Update the frame
        start = time.time()
        mosaic_frame = process(gray, images)
        print("Process time", time.time()- start, "seconds")

This will result in the following output.

Process time 0.02651691436767578 seconds
Process time 0.026834964752197266 seconds
Process time 0.025418996810913086 seconds
Process time 0.02562689781188965 seconds
Process time 0.025369882583618164 seconds
Process time 0.025450944900512695 seconds

Or a few lines from it. About 0.025-0.027 seconds.

Let’s try to use Numba in the equation. Numba is a just-in-time compiler for NumPy code. That means it compiles to python code to a binary for speed. If you are new to Numba we recommend you read this tutorial.

import cv2
import numpy as np
import glob
import os
import time
from numba import jit

def preprocess():
    path = "small-pics-16x12"
    files = glob.glob(os.path.join(path, "*"))
    files.sort()
    images = []
    for filename in files:
        img = cv2.imread(filename)
        images.append(cv2.cvtColor(img, cv2.COLOR_BGR2GRAY))
    return np.stack(images)

@jit(nopython=True)
def process(frame, images, box_height=12, box_width=16):
    height, width = frame.shape
    for i in range(0, height, box_height):
        for j in range(0, width, box_width):
            roi = frame[i:i + box_height, j:j + box_width]
            mean = np.mean(roi[:, :])
            roi[:, :] = images[int((len(images)-1)*mean/256)]
    return frame

def main(images):
    # Get the webcam (default webcam is 0)
    cap = cv2.VideoCapture(0)
    # If your webcam does not support 640 x 480, this will find another resolution
    cap.set(cv2.CAP_PROP_FRAME_WIDTH, 640)
    cap.set(cv2.CAP_PROP_FRAME_HEIGHT, 480)
    while True:
        # Read the a frame from webcam
        _, frame = cap.read()
        # Flip the frame
        frame = cv2.flip(frame, 1)
        frame = cv2.resize(frame, (640, 480))
        gray = cv2.cvtColor(frame, cv2.COLOR_BGR2GRAY)
        # Update the frame
        start = time.time()
        mosaic_frame = process(gray, images)
        print("Process time", time.time()- start, "seconds")
        # Show the frame in a window
        cv2.imshow('Mosaic Video', mosaic_frame)
        cv2.imshow('Webcam', frame)
        # Check if q has been pressed to quit
        if cv2.waitKey(1) == ord('q'):
            break
    # When everything done, release the capture
    cap.release()
    cv2.destroyAllWindows()

images = preprocess()
main(images)

This gives the following performance.

Process time 0.0014820098876953125 seconds
Process time 0.0013887882232666016 seconds
Process time 0.0015859603881835938 seconds
Process time 0.0016350746154785156 seconds
Process time 0.0018379688262939453 seconds
Process time 0.0016241073608398438 seconds

Which is a factor 15-20 speed improvement.

Good enough for live streaming. But the result is still not decent.

Step 6: A more advanced video mosaic approach

The more advanced video mosaic consist of approximating the each replacement box of pixels by the replacement image pixel by pixel.

import cv2
import numpy as np
import glob
import os
import time
from numba import jit

def preprocess():
    path = "small-pics-16x12"
    files = glob.glob(os.path.join(path, "*"))
    files.sort()
    images = []
    for filename in files:
        img = cv2.imread(filename)
        images.append(cv2.cvtColor(img, cv2.COLOR_BGR2GRAY))
    return np.stack(images)

@jit(nopython=True)
def process(frame, images, box_height=12, box_width=16):
    height, width = frame.shape
    for i in range(0, height, box_height):
        for j in range(0, width, box_width):
            roi = frame[i:i + box_height, j:j + box_width]
            best_match = np.inf
            best_match_index = 0
            for k in range(1, images.shape[0]):
                total_sum = np.sum(np.where(roi > images[k], roi - images[k], images[k] - roi))
                if total_sum < best_match:
                    best_match = total_sum
                    best_match_index = k
            roi[:,:] = images[best_match_index]
    return frame

def main(images):
    # Get the webcam (default webcam is 0)
    cap = cv2.VideoCapture(0)
    # If your webcam does not support 640 x 480, this will find another resolution
    cap.set(cv2.CAP_PROP_FRAME_WIDTH, 640)
    cap.set(cv2.CAP_PROP_FRAME_HEIGHT, 480)
    while True:
        # Read the a frame from webcam
        _, frame = cap.read()
        # Flip the frame
        frame = cv2.flip(frame, 1)
        frame = cv2.resize(frame, (640, 480))
        gray = cv2.cvtColor(frame, cv2.COLOR_BGR2GRAY)
        # Update the frame
        start = time.time()
        mosaic_frame = process(gray, images)
        print("Process time", time.time()- start, "seconds")
        # Show the frame in a window
        cv2.imshow('Mosaic Video', mosaic_frame)
        cv2.imshow('Webcam', frame)
        # Check if q has been pressed to quit
        if cv2.waitKey(1) == ord('q'):
            break
    # When everything done, release the capture
    cap.release()
    cv2.destroyAllWindows()

images = preprocess()
main(images)

There is one line to notice specifically.

total_sum = np.sum(np.where(roi > images[k], roi - images[k], images[k] - roi))

Which is needed, as we work with unsigned 8 bit integers. What it does is, that it takes the and calculates the difference between each pixel in the region of interest (roi) and the image[k]. This is a very expensive calculation as we will see.

Performance shows the following.

Process time 7.030380010604858 seconds
Process time 7.034134149551392 seconds
Process time 7.105709075927734 seconds
Process time 7.138839960098267 seconds

Over 7 seconds for each frame. The result is what can be expected by using this amount of images, but the performance is too slow to have a flowing smooth live webcam stream.

The result can be seen here.

Step 7: Compromise options

There are various options to compromise for speed and we will not investigate all. Here are some.

  • Use fever images in our collection (use less than 1.885 images). Notice, that using half the images, say 900 images, will only speed up 50%.
  • Bigger image sizes. Scaling up to use 32×24 images. Here we will still need to do a lot of processing per pixel still. Hence, the expected speedup might be less than expected.
  • Make a compromised version of the difference calculation (total_sum). This has great potential, but might have undesired effects.
  • Scale down pixel estimation for fever calculations.

We will try the last two.

First, let’s try to exchange the calculation of total_sum, which is our distance function that measures how close our image is. Say, we use this.

                total_sum = np.sum(np.subtract(roi, images[k]))

This results in overflow if we have a calculation like 1 – 2 = 255, which is undesired. On the other hand. It might happen in expected 50% of the cases, and maybe it will skew the calculation evenly for all images.

Let’s try.

Process time 1.857623815536499 seconds
Process time 1.7193729877471924 seconds
Process time 1.7445549964904785 seconds
Process time 1.707035779953003 seconds
Process time 1.6778359413146973 seconds

Wow. That is a speedup of a factor 4-6 per frame. The quality is still fine, but you will notice a poorly mapped image from time to time. But the result is close to the advanced video mosaic and far from the first simple video mosaic.

Another addition we could make is to estimate each box by only 4 pixels. This should still be better than the simple video mosaic approach. I have given the full code below.

import cv2
import numpy as np
import glob
import os
import time
from numba import jit

def preprocess():
    path = "small-pics-16x12"
    files = glob.glob(os.path.join(path, "*"))
    files.sort()
    images = []
    for filename in files:
        img = cv2.imread(filename)
        images.append(cv2.cvtColor(img, cv2.COLOR_BGR2GRAY))
    return np.stack(images)

def preprocess2(images, scale_width=8, scale_height=6):
    scaled = []
    _, height, width = images.shape
    print("Dimensions", width, height)
    width //= scale_width
    height //= scale_height
    print("Scaled Dimensions", width, height)
    for i in range(images.shape[0]):
        scaled.append(cv2.resize(images[i], (width, height)))
    return np.stack(scaled)

@jit(nopython=True)
def process3(frame, frame_scaled, images, scaled, box_height=12, box_width=16, scale_width=8, scale_height=6):
    height, width = frame.shape
    width //= scale_width
    height //= scale_height
    box_width //= scale_width
    box_height //= scale_height
    for i in range(0, height, box_height):
        for j in range(0, width, box_width):
            roi = frame_scaled[i:i + box_height, j:j + box_width]
            best_match = np.inf
            best_match_index = 0
            for k in range(1, scaled.shape[0]):
                total_sum = np.sum(roi - scaled[k])
                if total_sum < best_match:
                    best_match = total_sum
                    best_match_index = k
            frame[i*scale_height:(i + box_height)*scale_height, j*scale_width:(j + box_width)*scale_width] = images[best_match_index]
    return frame

def main(images, scaled):
    # Get the webcam (default webcam is 0)
    cap = cv2.VideoCapture(0)
    # If your webcam does not support 640 x 480, this will find another resolution
    cap.set(cv2.CAP_PROP_FRAME_WIDTH, 640)
    cap.set(cv2.CAP_PROP_FRAME_HEIGHT, 480)
    while True:
        # Read the a frame from webcam
        _, frame = cap.read()
        # Flip the frame
        frame = cv2.flip(frame, 1)
        frame = cv2.resize(frame, (640, 480))
        gray = cv2.cvtColor(frame, cv2.COLOR_BGR2GRAY)
        # Update the frame
        start = time.time()
        gray_scaled = cv2.resize(gray, (640//8, 480//6))
        mosaic_frame = process3(gray, gray_scaled, images, scaled)
        print("Process time", time.time()- start, "seconds")
        # Show the frame in a window
        cv2.imshow('Mosaic Video', mosaic_frame)
        cv2.imshow('Webcam', frame)
        # Check if q has been pressed to quit
        if cv2.waitKey(1) == ord('q'):
            break
    # When everything done, release the capture
    cap.release()
    cv2.destroyAllWindows()

images = preprocess()
scaled = preprocess2(images)
main(images, scaled)

Where there is added preprocessing step (preprocess2). The process time is now.

Process time 0.5559628009796143 seconds
Process time 0.5979928970336914 seconds
Process time 0.5543379783630371 seconds
Process time 0.5621011257171631 seconds

Which is okay, but still less than 2 frames per seconds.

The result can be seen here.

It is not all bad. It is still better than the simple video mosaic approach.

The result is not perfect. If you want to use it on a live webcam stream with 25-30 frames per seconds, you need to find further optimizations of live with the simple mosaic video approach.

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Create a Line Drawing from Webcam Stream using OpenCV in Python

What will we cover in this tutorial?

How to convert a webcam stream into a black and white line drawing using OpenCV and Python. Also, how to adjust the parameters while running the live stream.

See result here.

The things you need to use

There are two things you need to use in order to get a good line drawing of your image.

  1. GaussianBlur to smooth out the image, as detecting lines is sensitive to noise.
  2. Canny that detects the lines.

The Gaussian blur is advised to use a 5×5 filter. The Canny then has to threshold parameters. To find the optimal values for your setting, we have inserted two trackbars where you can set them to any value as see the results.

You can read more about Canny Edge Detection here.

If you need to install OpenCV please read this tutorial.

The code is given below.

import cv2
import numpy as np
# Setup camera
cap = cv2.VideoCapture(0)
# Set a smaller resolution
cap.set(cv2.CAP_PROP_FRAME_WIDTH, 640)
cap.set(cv2.CAP_PROP_FRAME_HEIGHT, 480)

def nothing(x):
    pass

canny = "Canny"
cv2.namedWindow(canny)
cv2.createTrackbar('Threshold 1', canny, 0, 255, nothing)
cv2.createTrackbar('Threshold 2', canny, 0, 255, nothing)
while True:
    # Capture frame-by-frame
    _, frame = cap.read()
    frame = cv2.flip(frame, 1)
    t1 = cv2.getTrackbarPos('Threshold 1', canny)
    t2 = cv2.getTrackbarPos('Threshold 2', canny)
    gb = cv2.GaussianBlur(frame, (5, 5), 0)
    can = cv2.Canny(gb, t1, t2)
    cv2.imshow(canny, can)
    frame[np.where(can)] = 255
    cv2.imshow('WebCam', frame)
    if cv2.waitKey(1) == ord('q'):
        break
# When everything done, release the capture
cap.release()
cv2.destroyAllWindows()
Posted on

OpenCV + Python: Move Objects Around in a Live Webcam Stream Using Your Hands

What will we cover in this tutorial?

How do you detect movements in a webcam stream? Also, how do you insert objects in a live webcam stream? Further, how do you change the position of the object based on the movements?

We will learn all that in this tutorial. The end result can be seen in the video below.

The end result of this tutorial

Step 1: Understand the flow of webcam processing

A webcam stream is processed frame-by-frame.

Illustration: Webcam processing flow

As the above illustration shows, when the webcam captures the next frame, the actual processing often happens on a copy of the original frame. When all the updates and calculations are done, they are inserted in the original frame.

This is interesting. To extract information from the webcam frame we need to work with the frame and find the features we are looking for.

In our example, we need to find movement and based on that see if that movement is touching our object.

A simple flow without any processing would look like this.

import cv2

# Get the webcam (default webcam is 0)
cap = cv2.VideoCapture(0)
# If your webcam does not support 640 x 480, this will find another resolution
cap.set(cv2.CAP_PROP_FRAME_WIDTH, 640)
cap.set(cv2.CAP_PROP_FRAME_HEIGHT, 480)
# To detect movement (to get the background)
background_subtractor = cv2.createBackgroundSubtractorMOG2()
# This will create an object
obj = Object()
# Loop forever (or until break)
while True:
    # Read the a frame from webcam
    _, frame = cap.read()
    # Flip the frame
    frame = cv2.flip(frame, 1)
    # Show the frame in a window
    cv2.imshow('WebCam', frame)
    # Check if q has been pressed to quit
    if cv2.waitKey(1) == ord('q'):
        break
# When everything done, release the capture
cap.release()
cv2.destroyAllWindows()

The above code will create a direct stream from your webcam to a window.

Step 2: Insert a logo – do it with a class that we will extend later

Here we want to insert a logo in a fixed position in our webcam stream. This can be achieved be the following code. The main difference is the new object Object defined and created.

The object briefly explained

  • The object will represent the logo we want to insert.
  • It will keep the current position (which is static so far)
  • The logo itself.
  • The mask used to insert it later (when insert_object is called).
  • The constructor (__init__(…)) does the stuff only needed once. Read the logo (it assumes you have a file named logo.png in the same folder), resize it, creating a mask (by gray scaling and thresholding), setting the initial positions of the logo.

Before the while-loop the object obj is created. All that is needed at this stage is to insert the logo in each frame.

import cv2
import numpy as np

# Object class to insert logo
class Object:
    def __init__(self, start_x=100, start_y=100, size=50):
        self.logo_org = cv2.imread('logo.png')
        self.size = size
        self.logo = cv2.resize(self.logo_org, (size, size))
        img2gray = cv2.cvtColor(self.logo, cv2.COLOR_BGR2GRAY)
        _, logo_mask = cv2.threshold(img2gray, 1, 255, cv2.THRESH_BINARY)
        self.logo_mask = logo_mask
        self.x = start_x
        self.y = start_y
    def insert_object(self, frame):
        roi = frame[self.y:self.y + self.size, self.x:self.x + self.size]
        roi[np.where(self.logo_mask)] = 0
        roi += self.logo

# Get the webcam (default webcam is 0)
cap = cv2.VideoCapture(0)
# If your webcam does not support 640 x 480, this will find another resolution
cap.set(cv2.CAP_PROP_FRAME_WIDTH, 640)
cap.set(cv2.CAP_PROP_FRAME_HEIGHT, 480)
# This will create an object
obj = Object()
# Loop forever (or until break)
while True:
    # Read the a frame from webcam
    _, frame = cap.read()
    # Flip the frame
    frame = cv2.flip(frame, 1)
    # Insert the object into the frame
    obj.insert_object(frame)
    # Show the frame in a window
    cv2.imshow('WebCam', frame)
    # Check if q has been pressed to quit
    if cv2.waitKey(1) == ord('q'):
        break
# When everything done, release the capture
cap.release()
cv2.destroyAllWindows()

This will result in the following output (when you put me in front of the webcam – that said, if you do it, expect that you sit in the picture and not me (just want to avoid any uncomfortable surprises for you when you show up in the window)).

The logo at a fixed position.

For more details on how to insert a logo in a live webcam stream, you can read this tutorial.

Step 3: Detect movement in the frame

Detecting movement is not a simple task. Depending on your needs, it can be solved quite simple. In this tutorial we only need to detect simple movement. That is, if you are in the frame and sit still, we do not care to detect it. We only care to detect the actual movement.

We can solve that problem by using the library function createBackgroundSubtractorMOG2(), which can “remove” the background from your frame. It is far from a perfect solution, but it is sufficient for what we want to achieve.

As we only want to see if there is movement or not, and not how much the difference is from previous detected background, we will use a threshold function to make the image black and white based on that. We set the threshold quite high, as it will also remove noise from the image.

It might happen that in your settings (lightening etc.) you need to adjust that value. See the comments in the code how to do that.

import cv2
import numpy as np

# Object class to insert logo
class Object:
    def __init__(self, start_x=100, start_y=100, size=50):
        self.logo_org = cv2.imread('logo.png')
        self.size = size
        self.logo = cv2.resize(self.logo_org, (size, size))
        img2gray = cv2.cvtColor(self.logo, cv2.COLOR_BGR2GRAY)
        _, logo_mask = cv2.threshold(img2gray, 1, 255, cv2.THRESH_BINARY)
        self.logo_mask = logo_mask
        self.x = start_x
        self.y = start_y
    def insert_object(self, frame):
        roi = frame[self.y:self.y + self.size, self.x:self.x + self.size]
        roi[np.where(self.logo_mask)] = 0
        roi += self.logo

# Get the webcam (default webcam is 0)
cap = cv2.VideoCapture(0)
# If your webcam does not support 640 x 480, this will find another resolution
cap.set(cv2.CAP_PROP_FRAME_WIDTH, 640)
cap.set(cv2.CAP_PROP_FRAME_HEIGHT, 480)
# To detect movement (to get the background)
background_subtractor = cv2.createBackgroundSubtractorMOG2()
# This will create an object
obj = Object()
# Loop forever (or until break)
while True:
    # Read the a frame from webcam
    _, frame = cap.read()
    # Flip the frame
    frame = cv2.flip(frame, 1)
    # Get the foreground mask (it is gray scale)
    fg_mask = background_subtractor.apply(frame)
    # Convert the gray scale to black and white with a threshold
    # Change the 250 threshold fitting your webcam and needs
    # - Setting it lower will make it more sensitive (also to noise)
    _, fg_mask = cv2.threshold(fg_mask, 250, 255, cv2.THRESH_BINARY)
    # Insert the object into the frame
    obj.insert_object(frame)
    # Show the frame in a window
    cv2.imshow('WebCam', frame)
    # To see the foreground mask
    cv2.imshow('fg_mask', fg_mask)
    # Check if q has been pressed to quit
    if cv2.waitKey(1) == ord('q'):
        break
# When everything done, release the capture
cap.release()
cv2.destroyAllWindows()

This results in the following output.

Output – again, don’t expect to see me when you run this example on your computer

As you see, it does a decent job to detect movement. Sometimes it happens that you create a shadow after your movements. Hence, it is not perfect.

Step 4: Detecting movement where the object is and move it accordingly

This is the tricky part. But let’s break it down simple.

  • We need to detect if the mask, we created in previous step, is overlapping with the object (logo).
  • If so, we want to move the object (logo).

That is what we want to achieve.

How do we do that?

  • Detect if there is an overlap by using the same mask we create for the logo and see if it overlaps with any points on the mask of the movement.
  • If so, we move the object by choosing a random movement. Measure how much overlap is. Then choose another random movement. See if the overlap is less.
  • Continue this a few times and chose the random movement with the least overlap.

This turns out to by chance to move away from the overlapping areas. This is the power of introducing some randomness, which simplifies the algorithm a lot.

A more precise approach would be to calculate in which direction the least mask is close to the object (logo). This becomes quite complicated and needs a lot of calculations. Hence, we chose to have this simple approach, which has both a speed element and direction element that works fairly well.

All we need to do, is to add a update_position function to our class and call it before we insert the logo.

import cv2
import numpy as np

# Object class to insert logo
class Object:
    def __init__(self, start_x=100, start_y=100, size=50):
        self.logo_org = cv2.imread('logo.png')
        self.size = size
        self.logo = cv2.resize(self.logo_org, (size, size))
        img2gray = cv2.cvtColor(self.logo, cv2.COLOR_BGR2GRAY)
        _, logo_mask = cv2.threshold(img2gray, 1, 255, cv2.THRESH_BINARY)
        self.logo_mask = logo_mask
        self.x = start_x
        self.y = start_y
        self.on_mask = False
    def insert_object(self, frame):
        roi = frame[self.y:self.y + self.size, self.x:self.x + self.size]
        roi[np.where(self.logo_mask)] = 0
        roi += self.logo
    def update_position(self, mask):
        height, width = mask.shape
        # Check if object is overlapping with moving parts
        roi = mask[self.y:self.y + self.size, self.x:self.x + self.size]
        check = np.any(roi[np.where(self.logo_mask)])
        # If object has moving parts, then find new position
        if check:
            # To save the best possible movement
            best_delta_x = 0
            best_delta_y = 0
            best_fit = np.inf
            # Try 8 different positions
            for _ in range(8):
                # Pick a random position
                delta_x = np.random.randint(-15, 15)
                delta_y = np.random.randint(-15, 15)
                # Ensure we are inside the frame, if outside, skip and continue
                if self.y + self.size + delta_y > height or self.y + delta_y < 0 or \
                        self.x + self.size + delta_x > width or self.x + delta_x < 0:
                    continue
                # Calculate how much overlap
                roi = mask[self.y + delta_y:self.y + delta_y + self.size, self.x + delta_x:self.x + delta_x + self.size]
                check = np.count_nonzero(roi[np.where(self.logo_mask)])
                # If perfect fit (no overlap), just return
                if check == 0:
                    self.x += delta_x
                    self.y += delta_y
                    return
                # If a better fit found, save it
                elif check < best_fit:
                    best_fit = check
                    best_delta_x = delta_x
                    best_delta_y = delta_y
            # After for-loop, update to best fit (if any found)
            if best_fit < np.inf:
                self.x += best_delta_x
                self.y += best_delta_y
                return

# Get the webcam (default webcam is 0)
cap = cv2.VideoCapture(0)
# If your webcam does not support 640 x 480, this will find another resolution
cap.set(cv2.CAP_PROP_FRAME_WIDTH, 640)
cap.set(cv2.CAP_PROP_FRAME_HEIGHT, 480)
# To detect movement (to get the background)
background_subtractor = cv2.createBackgroundSubtractorMOG2()
# This will create an object
obj = Object()
# Loop forever (or until break)
while True:
    # Read the a frame from webcam
    _, frame = cap.read()
    # Flip the frame
    frame = cv2.flip(frame, 1)
    # Get the foreground mask (it is gray scale)
    fg_mask = background_subtractor.apply(frame)
    # Convert the gray scale to black and white with a threshold
    # Change the 250 threshold fitting your webcam and needs
    # - Setting it lower will make it more sensitive (also to noise)
    _, fg_mask = cv2.threshold(fg_mask, 250, 255, cv2.THRESH_BINARY)
    # Find a new position for object (logo)
    # - fg_mask contains all moving parts
    # - updated position will be the one with least moving parts
    obj.update_position(fg_mask)
    # Insert the object into the frame
    obj.insert_object(frame)
    # Show the frame in a window
    cv2.imshow('WebCam', frame)
    # To see the fg_mask uncomment the line below
    # cv2.imshow('fg_mask', fg_mask)
    # Check if q has been pressed to quit
    if cv2.waitKey(1) == ord('q'):
        break
# When everything done, release the capture
cap.release()
cv2.destroyAllWindows()

Step 5: Test it

Well, this is the fun part. See a live demo in the video below.

The final result

What is next step?

I would be happy to hear any suggestions from you. I see a lot of potential improvements, but the conceptual idea is explained and showed in this tutorial.