Patent ID: 7212228

Claim:
In an automatic camera calibration method in a system comprising a plurality of cameras, the automatic camera calibration method comprising the step of: storing camera information, the camera information including a posture of one camera of the plurality of cameras, a position of one of plurality of cameras and a position of another one of the plurality of cameras; providing an observing camera directed towards a person to be tracked, the observing camera having at least one of its posture and its position stored as camera information; observing via the observing camera the person being tracked; extracting feature amounts of a person being tracked on a basis of an input image of the person being tracked from one camera, the feature amounts being at least one of a position of representative point of the person being tracked, a position of a head of the person being tracked and color of clothes of the person being tracked; corresponding the feature amounts, the posture of the one camera, the position of one camera and the position of another camera to a tracking model; processing the feature amounts, the posture of the one camera, the position of one camera and the position of another camera in conjunction with an observation time after the feature amounts, the posture of the one camera, the position of one camera and the position of another camera are corresponded to the tracking model to generate observation information; and updating, for each of the cameras, the estimated values of the position and posture of the one camera on the basis of the observation information shared with the other surrounding cameras and the estimated values of the respective current positions and postures of the surrounding cameras, thereby automatically calibrating the plurality of cameras using feature amounts, the posture of the one camera, the position of one camera and the position of another camera and without using a world coordinate system.