Detecting Motion with OpenCV — Image Analysis for Beginners

How to detect and analyze moving objects with OpenCV

We’re detecting movement! (image by author)

Motion detection has many purposes. You can use it to start recording once you see movement on a wildlife camera or a security camera, e.g. Another application is performance-improvement. Instead of analyzing a whole image, we only have to work with small parts that moved. Like only identifying the color of the moving cars in the image above.

In this article, we’ll create a fully working motion detector that can be used for all of the use-cases above. In the process, we’ll learn a lot about processing images with OpenCV. At the end of this article, you’ll have a fully operational motion detector and a lot more knowledge about image processing. Let’s code!

Series

This article is part of a series about OpenCV image processing. Check out the other articles:

• Reading images, video’s, your screen and the webcam
• Detecting and blurring faces
• Destroying Duck Hunt with template matching: finding images in images
• Creating a motion-detector (📍 You are here!)
• Detecting shapes without AI (under construction; coming soon)