Active Camera Networks and Semantic Event Databases for Intelligent Environments

In the future, intelligent rooms, with embedded multimodal sensory systems and semantic event databases, will support effective and efficient transactions of human activities and interactions. We are pursuing rigorous experimental investigations towards the development of such intelligent environments. In this paper we describe the overall system specification and general framework guiding our development. We also present details of the modules associated with the control and interpretation of video information acquired by a network of cameras and a novel semantic event database for characterization and recognition of activities. Evaluations of the system in a custom-built intelligent room are also presented.