Multi-Camera Worker Tracking in Logistics Warehouse Considering Wide-Angle Distortion

TL;DR

This paper presents a multi-camera worker tracking system in warehouses using wide-angle cameras, addressing distortion issues to improve accuracy by over 20%, which supports digital twin applications in logistics.

Contribution

It introduces a novel alignment method for wide-angle camera distortion correction in multi-camera worker tracking within logistics warehouses.

Findings

Over 20% improvement in tracking accuracy

Effective distortion correction for wide-angle cameras

Validated approach with appearance feature comparison

Abstract

With the spread of e-commerce, the logistics market is growing around the world. Therefore, improving the efficiency of warehouse operations is essential. To achieve this, various approaches have been explored, and among them, the use of digital twins is gaining attention. To make this approach possible, it is necessary to accurately collect the positions of workers in a warehouse and reflect them in a virtual space. However, a single camera has limitations in its field of view, therefore sensing with multiple cameras is necessary. In this study, we explored a method to track workers using 19 wide-angle cameras installed on the ceiling, looking down at the floor of the logistics warehouse. To understand the relationship between the camera coordinates and the actual positions in the warehouse, we performed alignment based on the floor surface. However, due to the characteristics of wide-angle cameras, significant distortion occurs at the edges of the image, particularly in the vertical direction. To address this, the detected worker positions from each camera were aligned based on foot positions, reducing the effects of image distortion, and enabling accurate position alignment across cameras. As a result, we confirmed an improvement of over 20% in tracking accuracy. Furthermore, we compared multiple methods for utilizing appearance features and validated the effectiveness of the proposed approach.