Object Detection with improved Object Localization
for HOG and SVM
1st Kalyan S
dept. of Electrical Engineering
National Institute of Technology,Calicut
India
kalyan m200077ee@nitc.ac.in
Abstract—Object localization is a key operation in computer
vision tasks such as Object detection, where applications depend
on the rapid and accurate position estimation of objects.An
Improper Bounding Box coordinates results in inaccurate dis-
tance calculation of the object from the camera.There are CNN
based localization methods such as pose estimation algorithm or
grabcut technique but they require more memory.We present a
simple and efficient edge detection based localization algorithm
that corrects the bounding box position.This involves determining
all the edge lines of the object and recalculating the bounding
box coordinates.
Index Terms—Bounding Box, Localization, Object detection,
Hough Transform
I. I NTRODUCTION
Object detection is a multi-task learning problem with the
goal of correctly identifying the object in the image while
also localizing the object into a bounding box, therefore the
end result of the object detection is to classify and localize
the object.After determining the bounding box coordinates
[tlx, tly, brx, bry],the next step is to determine the distance
of the object from the camera.
The distance is calculated based on the foot of the object
i.e.,((trx + brx)/2, bry), the midpoint of the lower horizontal
line of the bounding box.Therefore it is highly important to
calculate the distance properly,if not there will be an accident.
Some times only a certain portion of the entire object
may fit into the bounding box or the bounding box may be
much bigger than the object inside(loose bounding box).We
need to make sure that the object fits tightly in the bounding
box.So,We propose a method to get a tighter bounding box
around the object by finding the edges of the object and using
Hough Transform [1] to determine the exact coordinates of
those edge lines.This Paper mainly focuses on the pedestrian
localization. .
II. R ELATED W ORK
A. Edge Detection
Edge detection is a technique of image processing used to
identify points in a digital image with discontinuities, simply
to say, sharp changes in the image brightness. These points
where the image brightness varies sharply are called the edges
2nd Ajit Kulkarni
Senior Technical Architect
Continental Automotive
Banglore, India
ajit.2.kulkarni@continental-corporation.com
(or boundaries) of the image.It is one of the basic steps in
image processing, pattern recognition in images and computer
vision. When we process very high-resolution digital images,
convolution techniques come to our rescue.
There are various methods in edge detection, and the
following are some of the most commonly used methods [2]
-Prewitt edge detection,Sobel edge detection,Laplacian edge
detection,Canny edge detection.We have used prewitt edge
detector [3] as it is the simplest of all the edge detecting
methods.
V prewitt kernel =
 
-1 -1 -1
0 0 0
1 1 1
B. Hough Transform
Hough transform is a feature extraction method used in im-
age analysis. Hough transform can be used to isolate features
of any regular curve like lines, circles, ellipses, etc. Hough
transform in its simplest from can be used to detect straight
lines in an image. For our analysis we use line detection with
Hough Transform.The Hough Line Transform is a transform
used to detect straight lines. To apply the Transform, first an
edge detection pre-processing is desirable.
In an image analysis context, the coordinates of the point(s)
of edge segments (i.e. X, Y ) in the image are known and
therefore serve as constants in the parametric line equation,
while R(ρ) and Theta(θ) are the unknown variables we seek.
If we plot the possible (r) values defined by each (theta), points
in Cartesian image space map to curves (i.e. sinusoidal) in the
polar Hough parameter space. This point-to-curve transforma-
tion is the Hough transformation for straight lines.
III. A LGORITHM
Below is the Algorithm for Bounding Box correction
 Fig. 5. After thresholding
Fig. 1. Before the Bounding Box Correction

Fig. 6. After Hough Transform

Fig. 2. Old Bounding Box

Fig. 7. After the Bounding Box Correction

Fig. 3. After Blurring

Fig. 4. after Prewitt filter Fig. 8. Before Bounding Box Correction(cropped pedestrian)
Algorithm 1 Bounding Box Correction Algorithm
Require: a tighter Bounding Box
Ensure: bry ≈ y2(bottom most line)
set flag to 1
while flag 1 do
1. get bounding box(tlx,tly,brx,bry) image
2. apply Gaussian blur
3. apply prewitt filter
4. apply binary threshold
5. apply hough transform
if (bry > bottom most line’s y2) then
Fig. 12. After thresholding)
1. bry = y2(bottom most line)
2. flag = 0 bry = y2 (bottom most line)
1. bry = bry + 5
end if
end while

Fig. 13. New bounding Box)

A. Flow of Algorithm
B. Explanation
Fig. 9. Old Bounding Box)
The Bounding Box Correction is a necessary step to get
correct distances of objects from the camera.The first step is to
get the current bounding box image data as shown in fig 2.We
need to perform correction operation for a bigger bounding
box as well as the one where the whole object is not inside
the bounding box.The second step is to apply Gaussian filter
to smooth out the image to reduce noise as shown in fig 3.The
third step is to apply prewitt filter.

We have chosen the prewitt filter because ,it is the simplest

filter of all the filters to reduce complexity.The fourth step is

Fig. 10. After Smoothing)

Fig. 11. After Prewitt filter)

Fig. 14. After Bounding Box Correction)
to perform Binary Threshold so that only edges are visible
as shown in fig 4.Now we don’t have the coordinates of the
edge lines.This is where we use Hough Transform to get the
coordinates of each of the edge lines.The fifth step is to see
whether the edges are far from the bottom line of the bounding
box(bigger box case) or the edges touch the bottom line of the
bounding box(cropped box case) as shown in fig 5.

If the box is bigger ,bry is made equal to y2 of the last

line which is near the bottom of the bounding box.If the box
is a cropped one,bry is increased by 5 pixels and the process
is repeated until the bry is very close to the last line’s y2 as
shown in fig 7

R EFERENCES
[1] R. O. Duda and P. E. Hart, “Use of the hough transformation to detect
lines and curves in pictures,” Commun. ACM, vol. 15, pp. 11–15, 1972.
[2] D. Ziou and S. Tabbone, “Edge detection techniques - an overview,”
vol. 8, 06 2000.
[3] G. Shrivakshan and C. Chandrasekar, “A comparison of various edge
detection techniques used in image processing,” International Journal of
Computer Science Issues, vol. 9, pp. 269–276, 09 2012.