BACKGROUND

Today, imaging devices are used for detecting and locating objects, such as actors, in any number of applications. For example, digital cameras are often used to monitor the arrivals or departures of goods or performances of services in materials handling facilities such as warehouses, fulfillment centers, retail establishments or other like facilities. Digital cameras are also used to monitor the travels of persons or objects in locations such as airports, stadiums or other dense environments, or on one or more sidewalks, roadways or highways. Digital cameras are also frequently installed and used in financial settings such as banks or casinos, where money changes hands in large amounts, at high rates of speed, or between large numbers of people.

In dynamic environments such as materials handling facilities, transportation centers, financial institutions or like structures, it is frequently difficult to detect and locate large numbers of objects or actors using digital cameras. Many systems for detecting and locating objects or actors in three-dimensional (or “3D”) space rely on large numbers of individual digital cameras to capture imaging data (e.g., visual images of an object, or depth images or other samples of depths or ranges to the object), and to provide such data to servers or other centralized systems. Such servers or other systems may generate models of objects from the visual imaging data and the depth imaging data, such as textured polygonal meshes.

Generating 3D models of objects, such as actors, based on imaging data captured from large numbers of digital cameras may be a computationally expensive process that tends to consume or occupy substantial amounts of available data storage, processing and transmission capacities, and may require comparatively lengthy processing times. Therefore, in environments where objects that are to be located are large in number or small in size, located in tight or crowded quarters or moving at high speeds, generating 3D models of such objects and locating such objects within 3D space based on imaging data received from multiple digital cameras is currently a complex and challenging task.

