Algorithms and systems for shared access to a robotic streaming video camera
Dezhen Song · 2003
INTRODUCTION Robotic streaming video cameras with pan, tilt, and zoom controls are now commercially available and are being installed in hundreds of locations around the world . Remote viewers can adjust camera parameters via the Internet to observe desired details in the scene. Current methods restrict control to one user at a time; users have to wait in a queue for their turn to operate the camera. In this thesis, we develop ShareCam, a new approach that eliminates the queue and allows many users to access and share control of the robotic camera simultaneously. Since conflicting frame requests are made by users, a primary challenge is computing optimal camera parameters. We formalize the problem using a new metric, Intersection Over Maximum (IOM), to model the degree of satisfaction for each user, and seek to maximize total satisfaction for n users. We develop online algorithms to solve this optimization problem for cases where pan, tilt and zoom values can be either discrete or