Patent ID: 8300102

Claim:
A method of tracking movements of objects to infer a topology of a network of multiple cameras, comprising: sequentially obtaining images from the multiple cameras; extracting at least one moving object from each of the obtained images; determining and registering appearing cameras and appearing times at which the moving objects appear, and disappearing cameras and disappearing times at which the moving objects disappear, for the multiple cameras; and inferring the topology of the network using the appearing cameras and appearing times and the disappearing cameras and disappearing times, wherein the inference of the topology comprises: if the moving objects appear on the cameras, determining whether the moving objects are new moving objects; if the moving objects are the new moving objects, registering the moving objects and generating image nodes of the appearing cameras, and if the moving objects are registered moving objects, comparing moving times of the moving objects with a threshold moving time; and if the moving times are greater than the threshold moving time, re-registering the moving objects as new moving objects and generating image nodes of the appearing cameras, and if the moving times are not greater than the threshold moving time, comparing the appearing cameras with previous disappearing cameras to determine the topology of the network, wherein the determination of the topology of the network comprises: if the previous disappearing cameras are not registered or the appearing cameras of the moving objects are not the same as the previous disappearing cameras, determining whether the moving objects disappear from other cameras to generate image nodes or overlapping nodes; and if the appearing cameras of the moving objects are the same as the previous disappearing cameras, generating virtual nodes of the appearing cameras, wherein the generation of the virtual nodes comprises generating invisible edges to the virtual nodes, wherein weights of the invisible edges to the virtual nodes are the moving times.