Co-Tracking: Target Tracking via Collaborative Sensing of Stationary Cameras and Mobile Phones

Abstract

Tracking moving objects in a city, such as suspicious vehicles or persons, is important for public safety management. Traditionally, target tracking is assisted by the pre-deployed stationary surveillance cameras, which are with insufficient coverage. In this work, we propose a different approach called Co-Tracking, a real-time target tracking system that leverages both citizens' mobile phones and stationary surveillance cameras to track moving objects collaboratively. Two key techniques are focused. Firstly, in order to accurately assign tracking tasks, we propose the Middle Query Location Prediction (MQLP) algorithm for predicting the target's location. Secondly, in order to efficiently utilizes these human/machine resources, we propose a heuristic algorithm, namely S-Maximum, to optimize the task allocation, including maximizing the number of completed tracking tasks and minimizing the number of mobile phones. Experimental results show that the proposed Co-Tracking system can effectively track moving objects with low incentive costs.