Distributed perimeter patrolling and tracking for camera networks

In this work, we propose a distributed control strategy for perimeter patrolling and target tracking in a multi-camera video surveillance system with communication, resources and speed constraints. These cameras are required to monitor a perimeter and share common portions of this perimeter to allow redundant coverage. We propose an algorithm that is able to find the global patrolling strategy only through local asynchronous communication and coordination of neighboring cameras even in presence of physical limits of each camera visibility area. The algorithm converges to an optimal solution, and its distributed implementation is obtained through an electric circuit analogy. The proposed system also includes a Kalman-based filter for each camera to track moving targets within its areas of competence, and a distributed coordination scheme for target hand-off between different cameras that guarantees target locking at all times. Numerical simulations are provided to test the proposed algorithms.