Wonder what this system would make of geocachers? :D<b><br><br><br><a href="goog_1233602787770">'Smart' Cameras Are Watching You</a></b><a href="http://media.www.thelantern.com/media/storage/paper333/news/2009/01/09/Campus/smart.Cameras.Are.Watching.You-3582772.shtml"><br>
<i> The Lantern (Ohio State University) (01/09/09) Gorder, Pam Frost</i></a>
<br><br> Ohio State University (OSU) researchers are developing a
"smart" surveillance system that will be able to determine if a person
on the street appears to be lost or is acting suspiciously. The goal is
to create a network of smart video cameras that will allow officers to
quickly and efficiently observe and monitor a wide area. "In my lab,
we've always tried to develop technologies that would improve officers'
situational awareness, and now we want to give that same kind of
awareness to computers," says OSU professor James W. Davis. Davis says
the goal is to analyze and model the behavior patterns of people and
vehicles moving through a scene. "We are trying to automatically learn
what typical activity patterns exist in the monitored area, and then
have the system look for atypical patterns that may signal a person of
interest," he says. The system will focus on where a person goes and
what they do. The first algorithm expands the small field of view that
traditional pan-tilt-zoom cameras provide by taking a series of
snapshots from every direction within a camera's field of view and
combining them into a 360-degree, high-resolution panorama. The
operator can click anywhere on the picture and the camera will pan and
tilt to that location for a live image. Another program will map
locations onto an aerial map of the scene and then calculate where the
view spaces of the security cameras overlap and determine the
geo-referenced coordinates of each ground pixel in the panoramic image.
A third program will use the aerial and panorama views for tracking
people, which could be used to instruct a camera to follow specific
people based on their behaviors.