Wide area active collaborative tracking of waterborne vessels

We describe a real-time wide area surveillance system (WA-ACTV) for the automatic tracking of vessels using a network of PTZ cameras. The system is capable of optimally managing hundreds of PTZ cameras to simultaneously track a large numbers of vessels. The tracked vessels are fingerprinted using a scale-invariant part-based representation and subsequently used for reacquiring the tracks when the vessel comes back into view on a different sensor thus allowing the system to extend the tracking range over the wide area of surveillance. We have realized a small-scale version of the system and demonstrated it in an inland waterway as well as a small section of a sea port. The system operates in real-time at a frame rate of 15 Hz and is easily scalable to hundreds of PTZ cameras. The fingerprint-based reacquisition of targets has been evaluated to have a accuracy of 91%.