Patent ID: 8619140

Claim:
A method of monitoring an area, the method comprising: detecting motion of a camera monitoring the area; and automatically reconfiguring a plurality of cameras monitoring the area in response to the detected motion of the camera, the automatically reconfiguring including: estimating a physical area corresponding to a new field of view for the camera in response to the motion detecting, the estimating of the physical area including using a combination of: a motion signal based estimation and an image based estimation using a recent image captured before the motion, wherein the estimating further includes: in response to a failure of the at least one of: the motion signal based estimation or the image based estimation, comparing an image captured by the camera after the motion with a plurality of stored reference images, each reference image having a corresponding known unique field of view previously captured by the camera; updating, using the physical area, at least one of: a status for performing a monitoring task using the camera or a location of an area for the monitoring task within an image captured by the camera, wherein the monitoring task corresponds to a fixed physical location within the monitored area and generates an alert in response to detecting a predefined event corresponding to the fixed physical location; and automatically performing, based on the updating, at least one of: adjusting a field of view of a second camera monitoring the area or updating a status for performing the monitoring task using the second camera.