A new book published by Morgan & Claypool titled “Camera Networks: The Acquisition and Analysis of Videos over Wide Areas”, has been co-authored by Amit K. Roy-Chowdhury, an associate professor at Bourns College of Engineering located at the University of California, Riverside along with Bi Song, professor Roy-Chowdhury’s former student.
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In the book, professor Roy-Chowdhury explains in detail his reach in surveillance cameras and its applications in environmental monitoring, home monitoring and homeland security. The book details camera networks, which is a central research area required for developing concepts and technologies required for systems theory, image processing, mathematics, statistics and computer science. The new book on camera networks also addresses critical issues including visual challenges such as illumination, clutter, tracking and recognition, processing, scene analysis algorithms and positioning cameras.
Security personnel are required to simultaneously monitor about 30 screens for any signs of suspicious activity. Professor Roy-Chowdhury’s research is aimed at training cameras to make them smarter. The cameras are trained to identify suspicious activities or objects. Once the camera recognizes the suspicious object, security personnel is alerted and cued to the camera viewing the object. Furthermore, the cameras will also be optimized to make it capable of tracking a person with a gun as they move. Zoom capabilities will enable the camera to zoom in on the face, thus allowing facial recognition software to determine the suspect’s identity.
The topics covered in the book includewide-area tracking, distributed processing in camera networks, object and activity recognition, active sensing and directions for future research.