Cooperative Tracking of Moving Objects and Face Detection with a Dual Camera Sensor

This paper describes a sensor for autonomous surveillance capable of continuously monitoring the environment, while acquiring detailed images of specific areas. This is achieved by exploiting an omnidirectional camera and a PTZ camera, assembled together on a single mount. The two cameras form a single vision sensor, since data obtained processing the two images are used in a cooperative way. This system solves the problem affecting systems based on PTZ cameras only, since it does not exist a tracking system working reliably on PTZ images: the problem is solved here by performing the tracking in the omnidirectional image. This vision sensor is used in a surveillance application, that detects moving objects, and records all the faces of the people walking close to the sensor. It could be used to navigate or instruct a security or a service mobile robot.