Automatic Control Signal Generation of a CCD Camera for Object Tracking

CCD cameras monitoring a moving object generally operate under fixed view point or a defined pattern. So a free moving object goes out of the CCD camera’s sight in a short time and automatic control is required to observe it continuously. This paper proposes a signal generation algorithm for the automatic control of the CCD camera. The proposed algorithm computes horizontal and vertical displacements between the detected object position and the image center and coverts them into angles. Finally pan/tilt data are generated from the angles. To estimate the proposed algorithm, we compare the generated data in the automatic control with the measured data in manual control and carry out the object tracking using a simple object. The experiment results show that the difference between the generated and measured data is a negligible quantity and the object, which is moving in ±52 o /±40 o of pan/tilt, is kept in about ±13 o /±10 o .