CENTAUR · Crowded ENvironments moniToring for Activity Understanding and Recognition

We aim to develop a network of scientific excellence addressing research topics in computer vision and advancing the state of the art in video surveillance. The cross fertilization of ideas and technology between academia, research institutions and industry will lay the foundations to new methodologies and commercial solutions for monitoring crowded scenes. Research activities will be driven by specific sets of scenarios, requirements and datasets that reflect security operators’ needs for guaranteeing the safety of EU citizens. CENTAUR gives a unique opportunity to academia to be exposed to real life dataset, while enabling the validation of state-of-the-art video surveillance methodology developed at academia on data that illustrate real operational scenarios. The research agenda is motivated by ongoing advanced research activities in the participating entities. With Honeywell as a multi-industry partner, with security technologies developed and deployed in both its Automation and Control Solutions and Aerospace businesses, we have multiple global channels to exploit the developed technologies. With Neovison as a SME, we address small fast paced local markets, where the quick assimilation of new technologies is crucial. Three thrusts identified will enable the monitoring of crowded scenes, each led by an academic partner in collaboration with scientists from Honeywell: a) multi camera, multicoverage tracking of objects of interest, b) Anomaly detection and fusion of multimodal sensors, c) activity recognition and behavior analysis in crowded environments. We expect a long term impact on the field of video surveillance by: contributions to the state-of-the-art in the field, dissemination of results within the scientific and practitioners community, and establishing long term scientific exchanges between academia and industry, for a forum of scientific and industrial partners to collaborate on addressing technical challenges faced by scientists and the industry.""