Automatic description of object appearances in a wide-area surveillance scenario

In this paper we present a complete system for object tracking over multiple uncalibrated cameras with or without overlapping fields of view. We employ an approach based on the bag-of-visterms technique to represent and match tracked objects. The tracks are compared with a global object model based on an ensemble of individual object models. The system can globally recognise objects and minimise common tracking problems such as track drift or split. The output is a timeline representing the objects present in a given multi-camera scene. The methods employed in the system are online and can be optimized to operate in real-time.