Multi-Camera Positioning for Automated Tracking Systems in Dynamic Environments

Most existing camera placement algorithms focus on coverage and/or visibility analysis, which ensures that the object of interest is visible in the camera’s field of view (FOV). According to recent literature, handoff safety margin is introduced to sensor planning so that sufficient overlapped FOVs among adjacent cameras are reserved for successful and smooth target transition. In this paper, we investigate the sensor planning problem when considering the dynamic interactions between moving targets and observing cameras. The probability of camera overload is explored to model the aforementioned interactions. The introduction of the probability of camera overload also considers the limitation that a given camera can simultaneously monitor or track a fixed number of targets and incorporates the target’s dynamics into sensor planning. The resulting camera placement not only achieves the optimal balance between coverage and handoff success rate but also maintains the optimal balance in environments with various target densities. The proposed camera placement method is compared with a reference algorithm by Erdem and Sclaroff. Consistently improved handoff success rate is illustrated via experiments using typical office floor plans with various target densities.