CAD-based object tracking with distributed monocular camera for security monitoring

Describes a method for tracking moving objects using several monocular cameras which are mounted in various locations in a building. The authors propose a distributed vision agent model in which each agent has a monocular camera, an image processor and a communication link to other agents. Although the eye of each agent is monocular, it can estimate the location of unknown moving objects by using a CAD solid model of the building. The communication among agents enables the whole system harmoniously to track multiple objects. One application of the system is building security. For that purpose, the system has the ability to recognize and track a deformable object, that is, a walking person. The experimental results showed that the proposed distributed vision agent model can realize an accurate and wide area of object tracking for building security purposes. The merging of image data obtained by inexpensive distributed monocular cameras with a solid model of a building can provide useful 3D information, thus making an expensive active 3D sensing or stereo vision system unnecessary