Active Control of Camera Parameters and Algorithm Selection for Object Detection

In this thesis, we quantitatively investigate the effect of camera parameters, shutter speed and voltage gain, on the performance of several popular object detection algorithms, under various illumination conditions. Our experimental results indicate a significant difference in sensitivity of the evaluated algorithms to these camera parameters. Based on the experimental benchmark results, a novel active control of camera parameters method and an algorithm selection extension are proposed. In empirical evaluation, our active control approach outperforms the conventional auto-exposure method for most algorithms. Also, the proposed algorithm selection extension has demonstrated the capability of selecting a proper <algorithm, shutter, gain> tuple, in order to deal with varying light conditions.