Automatic detection and tracking of human heads using an active stereo vision system
Journal
Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
Journal Volume
1351
Pages
632-639
Date Issued
1997
Author(s)
Abstract
A head tracking system for automatically detecting and tracking human heads in complex backgrounds is developed. In this paper, two issues are addressed: the detection of human heads and the development of a head tracking system. First, based on an elliptical model for the human head, we propose a Maximum Likelihood (ML) detector to reliably locate human heads in images having complex backgrounds. This ellipse-based ML head detector is relatively insensitive to illumination and rotation of the human heads, and its computation is similar to template matching. Second, we develop a head tracking system that can monitor the entrance of a person, detect and track the person's head, and then control the stereo cameras to focus their gaze on this person's head. Difference images are used to detect the entrance of a human. The eUipse-based ML head detector and the mutually-supported constraint are used to extract the corresponding ellipses in a stereo image pair, Then, the 3D position computed from the centers of the two corresponding ellipses can be used for fixation. A well-calibrated active stereo head, the IIS-head, is used to perform the experiments and demonstrate that our approach is feasible and promising. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 1997.
Other Subjects
Computer vision; Geometry; Image matching; Maximum likelihood; Stereo image processing; Template matching; Tracking (position); Active stereo vision; Automatic Detection; Complex background; Difference images; Head tracking system; Maximum likelihood detectors; Stereo cameras; Stereo image pairs; Stereo vision
Type
conference paper