Smart camera

About: Smart camera is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 5571 publications have been published within this topic receiving 93054 citations. The topic is also known as: intelligent camera.

Blinkering Surveillance: Enabling Video Privacy through Computer Vision

Abstract: In this paper we describe a technology for protecting privacy in video systems. The paper presents a review of privacy in video surveillance and describes how a computer vision approach to understanding the video can be used to represent “just enough” of the information contained in a video stream to allow video-based tasks (including both surveillance and other “person aware” applications) to be accomplished, while hiding superfluous details, particularly identity, that can contain privacyintrusive information. The technology has been implemented in the form of a privacy console that manages operator access to different versions of the video-derived data according to access control lists. We have also built PrivacyCam—a smart camera that produces a video stream with the privacy-intrusive information already removed.

Video Analysis in Pan-Tilt-Zoom Camera Networks

Abstract: Pan-tilt-zoom (PTZ) cameras are able to dynamically modify their field of view (FOV). This functionality introduces new capabilities to camera networks such as increasing the resolution of moving targets and adapting the sensor coverage. On the other hand, PTZ functionality requires solutions to new challenges such as controlling the PTZ parameters, estimating the ego motion of the cameras, and calibrating the moving cameras.This tutorial provides an overview of the main video processing techniques and the currents trends in this active field of research. Autonomous PTZ cameras mainly aim to detect and track targets with the largest possible resolution. Autonomous PTZ operation is activated once the network detects and identifies an object as sensible target and requires accurate control of the PTZ parameters and coordination among the cameras in the network. Therefore, we present cooperative localization and tracking methods, i.e., multiagentand consensus-based approaches to jointly compute the target's properties such as ground-plane position and velocity. Stereo vision exploiting wide baselines can be used to derive three-dimensional (3-D) target localization. This tutorial further presents different techniques for controlling PTZ camera handoff, configuring the network to dynamically track targets, and optimizing the network configuration to increase coverage probability. It also discusses implementation aspects for these video processing techniques on embedded smart cameras, with a special focus on data access properties.

Video camera with major functions implemented in host software

Abstract: A low cost camera by implementing the major functions in host software is provided. This is accomplished by sending raw, digitized data from the camera directly to the host. The increased volume of raw data is handled by either an improved compression/decompression scheme using lossless compression, using lossy compression or using a shared bus with higher bandwidth. By moving such functions as color processing and scaling to the host, the pixel correction can also be moved to the host. This in turn allows the elimination of the frame buffer memory from the camera. Finally, the camera can use a low cost lens by implementing vignetting, distortion, gamma or aliasing correction with a correction value stored in a register of the camera for later access by the host to perform corrections.

The evolution from single to pervasive smart cameras

Abstract: Having seen increased interest from the research community, smart camera systems have gone through a number of evolutionary steps like from single cameras to distributed smart camera systems with collaboration features. This work aims at defining a taxonomy to classify these systems based on their platform capabilities, the degree of distributed processing as well as system autonomy aspects covering self-configuration and mobility. Existing camera systems are classified according to the proposed taxonomy. Besides capturing the design space for smart cameras, the main contribution of this paper is an overview of the research challenges for the envisioned class of pervasive smart camera systems. As defined in this work, future pervasive smart camera systems will be visual sensor networks targeted at end-user applications where special emphasis is put on unobtrusiveness of the cameras as well as simple deployment supported by self configuration capabilities.

Vision-based control of mobile robots

Abstract: This paper presents an approach for direct control of a mobile robot to keep it on a pre-taught path based solely on the perception from a monocular CCD camera. In particular, we present a novel vision-based control algorithm for mobile systems equipped with a conventional camera and a pan-tilt head or with an omnidirection camera. This algorithm avoids numerical instabilities of previously reported approaches. The experimental performance of the method as well as its practical limitations are discussed.