A novel change-detection scheduler for a network of depth sensors

Abstract

In many monitoring applications such as smart home and surveillance, deployment of multiple depth sensors increases monitoring area and offers better occlusion handling which is not sensitive to illumination condition in comparison with RGB sensors. However, multiple sensors also increase the volume of data associated with signal processing alongside the associated computational complexity and power consumption. In order to address these drawbacks, this paper proposes a novel change detection algorithm that can be used as a part of a sensor scheduler in a centralized (e.g. star) network configuration. Initially, each sensor in the network performs a unique single scan of the common environment in order to detect any incremental changes in the sensed depth signal. This initial change detection is then used as a basis for several follow-up tasks such as foreground segmentation, background detection, target detection, and tracking for monitoring tasks. Here, instead of processing a complete depth frame, we proposed to utilize a collection of 1D scans of the depth frames. A confidence function is defined that can be used to estimate the reliability of the detected changes in each sensor and to reduce any false positive events which can be triggered by the noise and outliers. Analysis of the proposed confidence function is carried out through performance analysis in the presence of sensor noise and other parameters which can affect the reliability of the sensed data of each sensor. Finally, a score function is defined based on the confidence of the detected parameters and sensor resolution in order to rank and match sensors with the associated objects to be tracked. It results in tracking target(s) by a sensor (or sensors) that offer a high tracking score. This approach offers many advantages such as decreasing the overall system power consumption by placing the sensors with a low confidence value on standby mode and reducing the overall computational overheads.