Real-time security monitoring around a video surveillance vehicle with a pair of two-camera omni-imaging devices

A pair of two-camera omni-imaging devices is designed for use on the roof of a video surveillance vehicle, and corresponding 3-D vision-based techniques for real-time security surveillance around the vehicle are proposed, which may be used to monitor passing-by persons around the vehicle. First, the design of the pair of two-camera omni-imaging devices, each device consisting of two omnicameras, with their optical axes vertically aligned, is described. Then, a new analytic technique for fast 3-D space data acquisition that is based on a panomapping method for image-to-world space transformation, as well as the rotational invariance property of the omni-image, is proposed. Techniques for constructing top- and perspective-view images for the convenient observation of the monitored environment are also proposed. Finally, 3-D vision techniques for automatically detecting passing-by persons and computing their locations and body heights are proposed, followed by experimental results, which show the precision and feasibility of the proposed techniques.