Automated Surveillance Systems with Multi-Camera and Robotic Platforms

(Original signatures are on file with official student records.) Acknowledgement First and foremost, I am deeply indebted to my parents, Kuei-Lan Hsieh and Eing-Ming Chen, who have always encouraged me to pursue higher education and supported me without reservation, to my beloved wife, Chiung-Ju Yeh, who has always stood beside me during this journey, and to my sister, Li-Wen Chen, and her family for their love. I would like to thank my advisor, Dr. Mongi Abidi, who has made me who I am and who I will be in my professional career. His willingness to support my work and his guidance throughout my studies has allowed me to develop my abilities to think through the problems and skills to find the answers. I sincerely thank him for this opportunity and everything he had done for me. Special thanks indeed go to Dr David Page and Dr. Andreas Koschan, whose regular technical comments provided me valuable guidance throughout my research. Also, I would like to thank, Dr. Frank Guess, Dr. Hairong Qi, and Dr. Seddik Djouadi. Their advice and counsel have been of equal importance. I greatly appreciate their time and input to this dissertation. Within the IRIS group, I express my sincerest gratitude for the opportunity and many conversations and assistances that have had tremendous impacts on my research. To my mentor, Dr. H. Lee Martin, your encouragement and advice to my research, career pursuit, and personal life are beyond any words that I can express for my appreciation. Finally, to my dear friends, Paul Slay and your family, Kevin Zinn and you family, Jon Blosser and your family, Mike Rogers and your family, Brent Wood and your family, and Tom Wilson and your family, I cannot adjust to the life here easily without your care. Abstract This dissertation addresses automated surveillance systems focusing on four topics: (1) spatial mappings of omnidirectional and PTZ cameras, and PTZ and PTZ cameras; (2) target hopping application for dual camera systems; (3) camera handoff and placement; (4) the mobile tracking platform. The four topics represent four contributions in this dissertation. Dual camera systems have been widely used in surveillance because of the ability to explore the wide field of view (FOV) of the omnidirectional camera and the wide zoom range of the PTZ camera. Most existing algorithms require a priori knowledge of the projection models of omnidirectional and PTZ cameras to solve the …