CHAMELEON: A video surveillance system that automatically combines images from multiple cameras to create a 180° panoramic view

The CHAMELEON European Research Project is a cost-effective, fast-to-deploy, low-power and flexible video surveillance system that automatically combines images from multiple cameras to create a 180° panoramic view.

Introduction
The CHAMELEON system is a cost-effective and low-power video surveillance system that outputs panoramic views at the monitoring station. The system uses secure and high speed wireless technology to stream video information to the authorized user. Its proprietary low complex hardware architecture makes it power efficient achieving more battery lifetime than its competitors. The system can run on both wireless IP and Ethernet.

The CHAMELEON project has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme managed by the Research Executive Agency under grant agreement 286510. Seven participants worked on the realization of the project between January 2012 and December 2013. The project was coordinated by Malta Industrial Innovation for SMEs (Malta), and the other partners of this project were EOINTEC Solutions Ltd (Ireland), Embedded Wireless GmbH (Germany), SIQR (Italy), Euroalarm (Czech Republic), SignalGenerix Ltd (Cyprus) and Fachhochschule Ulm (Germany).

Results
The CHAMELEON project team developed a cost-effective, fast-to-deploy and easy-to-operate, low-power and flexible video surveillance network that automatically combines images from multiple cameras with overlapping regions to create a natural seamless 180-degree panoramic view of the monitored area. This will greatly reduce the stress, boredom and lack of concentration experienced by security camera supervisors due to the information overload.
The innovative aspects of the CHAMELEON system are:
• The development and demonstration of a fast deployable, cost-effective and self-configurable video surveillance system that takes advantage of image overlapping redundancy to construct a natural 180-degree panoramic view of the monitored area at the observation station.
• The development of a flexible system that can be easily installed in a wired and wireless scenario according to the application requirements.
• The development of a low-power video-stitching unit, located at the camera site, which combines video streams from 3 CCTV cameras. This allows portable devices (smart phones and tablets) to stream and display the stitched video feed in real-time.

System Operation
The operation of the CHAMELEON system is divided into 3 phases:
• Deployment phase:
The installers set up the video surveillance system. An interactive application, running on a portable device (tablet) will guide the installer to adjust the field-of-view of the cameras and to configure the network.
• Configuration phase:
The stitching unit automatically identifies the overlaps between the cameras and calculates stitching parameters for that camera setup.
•Collection phase:
The stitching unit synchronizes and collects video streams from three cameras, combines them, compresses the stitched video stream and transmits it over IP.

Features
• Reliable and low-power wireless connectivity
• Fast deployment
• Interoperable system allowing for future modular extensions
• Very low-power consumption
• Up to 2 MP output resolution
• H.264 MPEG4 & MJPEG Compression
• 10/100 Mbps Ethernet
• Optional WLAN 802.11 g/a/n/ac
• RTSP Streaming & ONVIF Compliant
• Onboard SDHC storage (up to 32GB)

Applications
The CHAMELEON video surveillance system can be widely used in surveillance, remote monitoring, border control, temporary exhibitions and events, scenic regions, highways, bus and rail stations, car parks, plazas, sport meetings, office buildings and residence communities.

CHAMELEON Distributors

SIQR
www.siqr.it
Viale Paolo Onorato Vigliani 13
20148 Milano (MI), Italy
Tel [phone]
Fax [phone]
Email: [e-mail]

EUROALARM
www.euroalarm.cz
Modranska 80/283
14700, Praha, CZ
Tel: [phone]
Fax: [phone]
Email: [e-mail]

Countries

Cyprus, Czechia, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Malta