  Smart buildings use occupancy sensing for various tasks ranging from
energy-efficient HVAC and lighting to space-utilization analysis and emergency
response. We propose a people counting system which uses a low-resolution
thermal sensor. Unlike previous people-counting systems based on thermal
sensors, we use an overhead tripwire configuration at entryways to detect and
track transient entries or exits. We develop two distinct people counting
algorithms for this configuration. To evaluate our algorithms, we have
collected and labeled a low-resolution thermal video dataset using the proposed
system. The dataset, the first of its kind, is public and available for
download. We also propose new evaluation metrics that are more suitable for
systems that are subject to drift and jitter.
