Abstract

Smart cameras combine video sensing, processing, and communication on a single embedded platform. Networks of smart cameras are real-time distributed embedded systems that perform computer vision using multiple cameras. This new approach has emerged thanks to a confluence of simultaneous advances in four key disciplines: computer vision, image sensors, embedded computing, and sensor networks. Recently these visual sensor networks have gained a lot of interest in research and industry; applications include surveillance, assisted living and smart environments.

Although the distribution of sensing and processing in smart camera networks introduces several complications, we believe that the problems it solves are much more important than the challenges of designing and building such a network. This lecture introduces the underlying concepts of smart camera networks and presents selected applications. It covers topics such as architecture of smart cameras, embedded camera platforms, coordination and control of processing in smart camera networks, visual sensor networks and various applications.

Lecturer

Bernhard Rinner is professor at the Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt, Austria where he is heading the Pervasive Computing group. He is deputy head of the Institute of Networked and Embedded Systems and served as vice dean of the Faculty of Technical Sciences from 2008-2011. Before joining Klagenfurt he was with Graz University of Technology and held research positions at the Department of Computer Sciences at the University of Texas at Austin in 1995 and 1998/99.

His current research interests include embedded computing, embedded video and computer vision, sensor networks and pervasive computing. Bernhard Rinner has been co-founder and general chair of the ACM/IEEE International Conference on Distributed Smart Cameras and has served as chief editor of a special issue on this topic in The Proceedings of the IEEE. Currently, he is Associate Editor for Ad Hoc Networks Journal and EURASIP Journal on Embedded Systems. Together with partners from four European universities he has jointly initiated the Erasmus Mundus Joint Doctorate Program on Interactive and Cognitive Environments (ICE).

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