Patent ID: 7801331

Claim:
Apparatus for surveillance and object tracking, comprising: a control station; a remote set of a plurality of digital cameras; an image data combination and compression means for providing image data via a bidirectional network having a limited bandwidth to said control station; the apparatus being adapted to provide, via the bidirectional network, from the remote set of the plurality of cameras to said control station first image data as an overall image of a scene to be surveyed, corresponding to a combination of image data from a plurality of the cameras and having a resolution reduced to a value below the maximum resolution possible for a given camera of the plurality of cameras by said image data combination and compression means; the apparatus being further adapted to transmit from the control station via the bidirectional network to the remote set of the plurality of cameras and the image data combination and compression means information defining a section of the overall image containing an object to be tracked within the overall scene and to provide second image data corresponding to the section of the overall image, the section of the overall image being independent of image boundaries of single cameras of the plurality of cameras and having a resolution higher than the resolution of the first image data, so as to provide a highly resolved image of the object to be tracked within the image data quickly without overburdening the bidirectional network having a limited bandwidth.