title: Visual sensor technology for advanced surveillance systems: historical view, technological aspects and research activities in Italy.
abstract: The paper is a survey of the main technological aspects of advanced visual-based surveillance systems. A brief historical view of such systems from the origins to nowadays is given together with a short description of the main research projects in Italy on surveillance applications in the last twenty years. The paper then describes the main characteristics of an advanced visual sensor network that (a) directly processes locally acquired digital data, (b) automatically modifies intrinsic (focus, iris) and extrinsic (pan, tilt, zoom) parameters to increase the quality of acquired data and (c) automatically selects the best subset of sensors in order to monitor a given moving object in the observed environment.
authors.affiliation: Department of Mathematics and Computer Science University of Udine, via delle Scienze, 206, 33100 Udine, Italy.
authors.forename: Gian Luca
authors.initials: GL
authors.lastname: Foresti
authors.forename: Christian
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Micheloni
authors.forename: Claudio
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Piciarelli
authors.forename: Lauro
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Snidaro