Design and Evaluation of a Notification System for Alarm Management in Distributed Vision Networks

Abstract

Latest research results in the areas of computer vision and embedded systems have made way for smart cameras. These cameras use a built-in computing unit to analyse images directly at the CCD sensor. Smart cameras can cooperate in order to analyse scenes from different perspectives and track objects autonomously. In large smart camera systems (also known as distributed vision networks), distributed algorithms are needed that allow for cooperation and self-organisation among cameras. This paper focuses on alarm management in distributed vision networks, in which security staff is equipped with mobile terminals. These terminals and cameras are connected via an adhoc network. We present a robust and lightweight algorithm that allows to notify guards quickly in case serious incidents have happened. This algorithm has been evaluated by simulation experiments and in a modestly sized real world testbed. Results show that the algorithm takes reasonable time to terminate (10s) in a network of 100 cameras.

SmaCCS: Smart Camera Cloud Services - Towards an Intelligent Cloud-based Surveillance System

“…The notification of users in case of alarms is an important task. We will extend our existing work as described in (Hoffmann et al, 2010) by carrying our work on the user interface design further. In (Yee et al, 2012), practical solutions are given to adapt a GUI to most effectively suite the needs of different user groups under psychological aspects.…”

AMiDiViN

“…Since our network topology changes constantly due to node movement and disruptions on communication channels, we apply a customised routing algorithm that has been tailored to suit the needs arising in large scale Smart Camera networks [8] for the notification of guards. This notification algorithm is a lightweight adaption of on-demand route discovery protocols like AODV [17] and DSR [12] with special functionalities for notification.…”

“…Since the position of guards changes over time, the cameras P needs to search for the guard gr in the system. This issue has been addressed with a customised routing algorithm presented in [8]. AMiDiViN allows for a bi-directional communication between cameras and guards.…”