Exact and Distributed Algorithms for Collaborative Camera Control

We propose the ShareCam Problem: controlling a single robotic pan, tilt, zoom camera based on simultaneous frame requests from n online users. To solve it, we propose a new piecewise linear metric, Intersection Over Maximum (IOM), for the degree of satisfaction for each users. To maximize overall satisfaction, we present several algorithms. For a discrete set of m distinct zoom levels, we give an exact algorithm that runs in O(nm) time. The algorithm can be distributed to run in O(nm) time at each client and in O(n log n + mn) time at the server.