Eagle-eye: a Dual-ptz-camera System for Target Tracking in a Large Open Area

An active camera, i.e., pan-tilt-zoom (PTZ) camera, can be used either to monitor a wide area or capture a high resolution image of a specific object by adjusting the zoom value. In order to achieve the above two goals simultaneously just like an eagle’s eye, a novel dual–PTZ-camera system, called Eagle-Eye, is proposed in this paper. The system can keep monitoring the whole area while tracking and focusing on the details of an object. Two techniques, moving object detection and fuzzy matching, are used alternatively for target tracking. According to the experimental results obtained with the implemented prototype, the success rates of tracking tasks for various moving speeds during daytime and nighttime are about 90 percent. The success rate with occlusion condition is also more than 80 percent. Furthermore, the average success rates with four special moving paths are 83.8 percent. These results show that Eagle-Eye system is feasible and achieves good tracking performance under various conditions.