Camera Network Coordination for Intruder Detection

This paper proposes surveillance trajectories for a network of autonomous cameras to detect intruders. We consider smart intruders, which appear at arbitrary times and locations, are aware of the cameras configuration, and move to avoid detection for as long as possible. As performance criteria, we consider the worst case detection time (WDT) and the average detection time (ADT). We focus on the case of a chain of cameras, and we obtain the following results. First, we characterize a lower bound on the WDT and on the ADT of smart intruders. Second, we propose a team trajectory for the cameras, namely equal-waiting trajectory, with minimum WDT and with guarantees on the ADT. Third, we design a distributed algorithm to coordinate the cameras along an equal-waiting trajectory. Fourth, we design a distributed algorithm for cameras reconfiguration in the case of failure or network change. Finally, we illustrate the effectiveness and robustness of our algorithms via numerical studies and experiments.