Patent ID: 9710924
Date: 2017-07-18
CPC Classifications: G06T

Claim:
1. A computer implemented method for automatically determining field of view overlap among multiple cameras as a function of the temporal overlap of object tracks, the method comprising executing on a processing unit the steps of: determining values of similarity for potential pairings of each of a plurality of object tracks of movements of objects over time through a field-of-view of a first camera with each of a plurality of object tracks of movements of objects over time through a field-of-view of a second camera; assigning into pairs each of the object tracks within the first camera field-of-view to ones each of the object tracks within the second camera field-of-view that each have a highest determined similarity value of the similarity values determined for their respective potential pairings; and determining that the assigned object track pairs correspond to overlapping portions of the fields-of-view of the first and second paired cameras if portions of each of the assigned object track pairs have a temporally overlapping period of time; and wherein the step of assigning into pairs each of the object tracks that have the highest determined similarity values for their respective potential pairings comprises: determining the values of similarity for the potential pairings as a function of appearance information data of the respective objects or their tracks based on a strength of similarity of object features that chosen from the group consisting of color features, size features and texture features; matching objects as a function of a high-dimensional feature vector that comprises a plurality of histograms of color channels and oriented gradients texture features; building a similarity matrix for different respective values of similarity comprising a plurality of locations that are each defined as pairings of one each of the object tracks in the first camera view to one each of the object tracks in the second camera view; populating each of the matrix locations with similarity values of their respective track pairings; discarding matrix locations populated with similarity values that have similarity values below a requisite minimum threshold value; and determining the potential pairings as the object tracks corresponding to the populated matrix locations having the highest similarity values.