Recovery of temporal synchronization error through online 3D tracking with two cameras

Abstract

Multiple object tracking within a network of cameras with overlapping fields of views has gained interest. The acquisition of images in an asynchronous manner hinders the practical implementation of such systems. Most of the previous work reported tests over short intervals, leaving the performance degradation due to asynchronous image acquisition unknown. In this work, we propose an online method to recover the synchronization error while tracking objects. The recovered error is fed back to trackers so as to restore their performance. The time synchronization error is measured by the mismatch in the epipolar constraint between the two cameras. We show that successful recovery of the synchronization error is possible when its product with the object motion speeds are within some limits.