A Fast Linear Registration Framework for Multi-camera GIS Coordination

We propose a novel registration framework to map the field-of-coverage of pan-tilt cameras to a GIS (Geographic Information System) planar coordinate system. The camera´s field-of-coverage is obtained by building a spherical panorama using an efficient active camera model. The pan-tilt orientation rays from the panoramic image are projected onto a GIS orthophoto ground plane and registered using a transformation matrix. The parameters of the transformation are learned in linear time using least squares. The proposed model is experimentally evaluated by registering panoramas from multiple cameras with an orthophoto and then overlaying them with GIS metadata ground truth to validate the accuracy of registration. We also demonstrate the applicability of such a GIS-based framework to a multi-camera, master-slave active tracking system.