Multi-camera Relay Tracker Utilizing Color-Based Particle Filtering

This paper presents a multi-camera surveillance system for motion detection and object tracking based on Motion History Image (MHI), Color-based Particle Filtering (CPF), and a novel relay strategy. The system is composed of two Pan-Tilt-Zoom (PTZ) cameras completely calibrated and placed on desks. Initially, both cameras work as stationary Scene View Camera (SVC) to detect objects for abnormal human motion events such as sudden falling using MHI. If an object is detected in one camera, the other camera can then be controlled to work as Object View Camera (OVC), follow this object, and get zoom-in images using CPF. The states of the tracked object can be exchanged across cameras so that in case that the OVC loses the object, the SVC has sufficient knowledge of the object location, and it can become a new OVC to run the tracking relay. Meanwhile, the original OVC should be reset to work as SVC in order not to lose the global view. Two scenarios, in which the cameras have large or little overlapping field of view, are proposed and analyzed. Experimental study further demonstrates the effectiveness of the proposed system.