OpenCV 4 for Secret Agents: Use OpenCV 4 in secret projects to classify cats, reveal the unseen, and react to rogue drivers, 2nd Edition

Turn futuristic ideas about computer vision and machine learning into demonstrations that are both functional and entertaining

Key Features

• Build OpenCV 4 apps with Python 2 and 3 on desktops and Raspberry Pi, Java on Android, and C# in Unity
• Detect, classify, recognize, and measure real-world objects in real-time
• Work with images from diverse sources, including the web, research datasets, and various cameras

Book Description

OpenCV 4 is a collection of image processing functions and computer vision algorithms. It is open source, supports many programming languages and platforms, and is fast enough for many real-time applications. With this handy library, you'll be able to build a variety of impressive gadgets.

OpenCV 4 for Secret Agents features a broad selection of projects based on computer vision, machine learning, and several application frameworks. To enable you to build apps for diverse desktop systems and Raspberry Pi, the book supports multiple Python versions, from 2.7 to 3.7. For Android app development, the book also supports Java in Android Studio, and C# in the Unity game engine. Taking inspiration from the world of James Bond, this book will add a touch of adventure and computer vision to your daily routine. You'll be able to protect your home and car with intelligent camera systems that analyze obstacles, people, and even cats. In addition to this, you'll also learn how to train a search engine to praise or criticize the images that it finds, and build a mobile app that speaks to you and responds to your body language.

By the end of this book, you will be equipped with the knowledge you need to advance your skills as an app developer and a computer vision specialist.

What you will learn

• Detect motion and recognize gestures to control a smartphone game
• Detect car headlights and estimate their distance
• Detect and recognize human and cat faces to trigger an alarm
• Amplify motion in a real-time video to show heartbeats and breaths
• Make a physics simulation that detects shapes in a real-world drawing
• Build OpenCV 4 projects in Python 3 for desktops and Raspberry Pi
• Develop OpenCV 4 Android applications in Android Studio and Unity

Who this book is for

If you are an experienced software developer who is new to computer vision or machine learning, and wants to study these topics through creative projects, then this book is for you. The book will also help existing OpenCV users who want upgrade their projects to OpenCV 4 and new versions of other libraries, languages, tools, and operating systems. General familiarity with object-oriented programming, application development, and usage of operating systems (OS), developer tools, and the command line is required.

Table of Contents

1. Preparing for the Mission
2. Searching for Luxury Accommodations Worldwide
3. Training a Smart Alarm to Recognize the Villain and His Cat
4. Controlling a Phone App with Your Suave Gestures
5. Equipping Your Car with a Rearview Camera and Hazard Detection
6. Creating a Physics Simulation Based on a Pen and Paper Sketch
7. Seeing a Heartbeat with a Motion-Amplifying Camera
8. Stopping Time and Seeing like a Bee

Joseph Howse lives in a Canadian fishing village, where he chats with his cats, crafts his books, and nurtures an orchard of hardy fruit trees. He is President of Nummist Media Corporation, which exists to support his books and to provide mentoring and consulting services, with a specialty in computer vision. On average, in 2015-2022, Joseph has written 1.4 new books or new editions per year for Packt. He also writes fiction, including an upcoming novel about the lives of a group of young people in the last days of the Soviet Union.

Arun Ponnusamy works as a computer vision research engineer at an AI start-up in India. He is a lifelong learner, passionate about image processing, computer vision, and machine learning. He is an engineering graduate from PSG College of Technology, Coimbatore. He started his career at MulticoreWare Inc., where he spent most of his time on image processing, OpenCV, software optimization, and GPU computing. Arun loves to build his understanding of computer vision concepts clearly, allowing him to explain it in an intuitive way on his blog and in meetups. He has created an open source Python library for computer vision, named cvlib, which is aimed at simplicity and user friendliness. He is currently working on object detection, action recognition, and generative networks.