Like the creation of many important inventions, IGUANA was invented by accident and by an outsider with brand new prospective. The inventor, Mr. Chaohong ERIC Chang, was watching evening news on a peaceful night back in early 2002. There was news showing a surveillance video footage of a street robbery and asking the viewers to help the police to identify the suspect. But, the image of the criminal was, as usual, too blur to make any useful identification except shown the robbery did happen. The magnification of the image also did not serve any good to identify the suspect.
After moment of inspiration, ERIC, as a veteran engineer familiar in system automation, thought of a simple solution. If the location of the suspect can be identified, then the detailed image of the suspect can be taken. An active tracking surveillance video system was then invented with two cameras inside, the first camera with wide angle lens is used to take the global view of the surveillance area, with the help of video analytics moving target can be identified, and the second camera with telescopic lens is driven to take the closed-up picture of the target. The picture quality of the suspect can be improved up to 200 fold in this arrangement.
However, there is still something missing in this basic design. The camera with telescopic lens is too heavy to move quickly enough to catch the moving target and to work on 24/7 basis. The excess weight of the camera will wear out the moving mechanism in short time. After couple minuets of deep thinking, a moving mirror is added to make the system practical and meet the demanding requirements of the real world applications. A light weight mirror can be driven effortlessly and quickly to any given location within the surveillance area. This design ensures the IGUANA active tracking surveillance system to offer years of reliable service