For intermediate and advanced programmers, this book teaches a broad range of skills in computer vision, signal processing, and application development. Even experienced users of OpenCV will discover new ideas and techniques in the book’s projects, which help readers achieve the following objectives:
- Create a search engine that finds images of real estate and classifies these images as “luxury” or “Stalinist”, based on color histogram analysis.
- Detect and recognize human faces and cat faces as a means of controlling an alarm.
- Detect motion and recognize gestures to control a smartphone game.
- Detect car headlights and estimate distances to them. Run this application in a car using a Raspberry Pi.
- Using a real-time implementation of Eulerian video magnification, amplify motion so that a person’s heartbeat and breathing become clearly visible.
- Draw a puzzle on paper and see it come to life as a physics simulation on a smartphone.
- Use OpenCV with Python (Windows, Mac, Linux), Java (Android), and C# (the Unity game engine).
As the title suggests, OpenCV for Secret Agents takes inspiration from spy fiction, especially the James Bond franchise. It is an adventure into a world of smart gadgets, unexpected use cases, and excruciating puns.
The author, Joseph Howse, is President of Nummist Media, which provides training, consulting, and software development services.
The book can be purchased from PacktPub as either a physical book or as a PDF eBook.
Source code is available from the author’s website.
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