Cooperative Tracking Using Multiple PTZ Thermal Imagers

A cooperative object tracking framework is proposed which shifts the priority of tracking by pose estimation based on registration between fields of view (FOVs) of different pan-tilt-zoom (PTZ) thermal imagers, avoiding transferring the local features from one imager to another. When an object is selected for tracking, the related PTZ thermal imager tracks it using an improved particle filtering method, and estimates the pose of the imager simultaneously. Once the object enters an overlapping FOV of two imagers, the handoff thermal imager is activated immediately according to the spatial relationship built by pose estimation, and turns to tacking and pose estimation status. Meanwhile, the previous camera returns to waiting status for reactivation. Experiments are conducted to show the proposed framework is applicable to cooperative object tracking for PTZ thermal infrared imagers.