A Distributed Topological Camera Network Representation for Tracking Applications

Abstract--Sensor networks have been widely used for surveillance, monitoring, and tracking. Camera networks, in particular, provide a large amount of information that has traditionally been processed in a centralized manner employing a priori knowledge of camera location and of the physical layout of the environment. Unfortunately, these conventional requirements are far too demanding for ad-hoc distributed networks. In this article, we present a simplicial representation of a camera network called the camera network complex (CN-complex), that accurately captures topological information about the visual coverage of the network. This representation provides a coordinate-free calibration of the sensor network and demands no localization of the cameras or objects in the environment. A distributed, robust algorithm, validated via two experimental setups, is presented for the construction of the representation using only binary detection information. We demonstrate the utility of this repre...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2010
• Where: TIP
• Authors: Edgar J. Lobaton, Ramanarayan Vasudevan, Ruzena Bajcsy, Shankar Sastry
• Keywords: Ad-hoc Distributed Networks, Camera Network, Education, Sensor Network, TIP 2010