A method for detecting an object includes acquiring a first video of a source domain where a vision-based object detector is trained. Change detection is performed on the first video to collect one or more first localized, unlabeled sample images from the source domain. A second video is acquired of a target domain where the vision-based object detector is used. Change detection is performed on the second video to collect one or more second localized, unlabeled sample images from the target domain. A domain adaptation parameter is determined based on, one or more domain shift properties between the one or more first localized, unlabeled sample images from the source domain and the one or more second localized, unlabeled sample images from the target domain. The vision-based object detector is adapted to be used for object detection in the target domain based on the domain adaptation parameter.