Distributed object tracking with robot and disjoint camera networks

We describe a novel two stage approach to object localization and tracking using a network of wireless cameras and a mobile robot. In the first stage, a robot travels through the camera network while updating its position in a global coordinate frame which it broadcasts to the cameras. The cameras use this information, along with image plane location of the robot, to compute a mapping from their image planes to the global coordinate frame. This is combined with an occupancy map generated by the robot during the mapping process to track the objects. We present results with a nine node indoor camera network to demonstrate that this approach is feasible and offers acceptable level of accuracy in terms of object locations.