[Az-Geocaching] 'Smart' Cameras Are Watching You

[AZTech]

Wonder what this system would make of geocachers?  :D*


'Smart' Cameras Are Watching You <goog_1233602787770>*
* The Lantern (Ohio State University) (01/09/09) Gorder, Pam
Frost*<http://media.www.thelantern.com/media/storage/paper333/news/2009/01/09/Campus/smart.Cameras.Are.Watching.You-3582772.shtml>

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.
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