An optimal image selection from multiple cameras under the limitation of communication capacity

In general, a tele-monitoring system is composed of a number of cameras to obtain an adequate and continuous visual information of the environment. However, capturing every image is not always helpful for the operator to understand the state of environment; it may also not be able to transfer all of them to the operator due to the limitation of communication capability. Therefore, when multiple cameras were used for the tele-monitoring systems, the usefulness of image should be calculated, and then, the most useful image should be transferred for the operator to grasp the situation. In this paper, we consider the visibility constraint as a criterion for the computation of the usefulness of image, and propose the spherical projection method for the fast computation of the visibility region. The results of simulation and experiment show that the determination of the optimal image using the visibility constraint is helpful for the automation of the tele-monitoring systems under the limitation of communication capacity.