Distributed Metadata Extraction Strategies in a Multi-Resolution Dual Camera System

Several advanced video-surveillance systems based on video processing and understanding techniques have been recently developed [1, 2]. The principal aim of such systems is to recognize and classify potentially dangerous situations and consequentially generate some kind of alarm to raise the attention of a human operator. The use of automatic scene understanding systems is becoming more and more frequent in modern society: in particular, video-surveillance systems can be used for transport monitoring [3, 4], urban and building security [5], tourism [6], and bank protection [7, 8], even if their use was originally restricted to a military related field [9, 10]. Fast improvements in computing capabilities, cheap sensors and advanced image processing algorithms can be considered as the enabling technologies for the development of real-time video surveillance and monitoring systems. In particular, aspects related to the distribution of intelligence in cooperative systems need to be considered for the development of third-generation surveillance systems. A multiple sensors setup can be useful for satisfying several requirements on the system functionalities: a system using several video sensors without overlapped fields of view can be useful when a large area needs to be guarded.