Egocentric navigation for video surveillance in 3D Virtual Environments

Current surveillance systems can display many individual video streams within spatial context in a 2D map or 3D Virtual Environment (VE). The aim of this is to overcome some problems in traditional systems, e.g. to avoid intensive mental effort to maintain orientation and to ease tracking of motions between different screens. However, such integrated environments introduce new challenges in navigation and comprehensive viewing, caused by imperfect video alignment and complex 3D interaction. In this paper, we propose a novel, first-person viewing and navigation interface for integrated surveillance monitoring in a VE. It is currently designed for egocentric tasks, such a tracking persons or vehicles along several cameras. For these tasks, it aims to minimize the operator´s 3D navigation effort while maximizing coherence between video streams and spatial context. The user can easily navigate between adjacent camera views and is guided along 3D guidance paths. To achieve visual coherence, we use dynamic video embedding: according to the viewer´s position, translucent 3D video canvases are smoothly transformed and blended in the simplified 3D environment. The animated first-person view provides fluent visual flow which facilitates easier maintenance of orientation and can aid in spatial awareness. We discuss design considerations, the implementation of our proposed interface in our prototype surveillance system and demonstrate its use and limitations in various surveillance environments.