Towards unsupervised learning for automatic multi-class object detection in surveillance videos

Object detection is a critical step in automated surveillance. A common approach to constructing object detectors consists of annotating large datasets and using them to train the detectors. However, due to inevitable limitations of a typical training data set, such supervised approach is unsuitable for building generic surveillance systems applicable to a wide variety of scenes and camera setups. In our previous work we proposed an unsupervised method for learning and detecting the dominant object class in a general dynamic scene observed by a static camera. In this paper, we investigate the possibilities to expand the applicability of this method to the problem of multiple dominant object classes. We propose an idea how to approach this expansion, and perform a proof-of-concept evaluation of this idea using a representative surveillance video sequence.