View-based Location and Tracking of Body Parts for Visual Interaction

This paper presents a real time approach to locate and track the upper torso of the human body. Our main interest is not in 3D biometric accuracy, but rather a sufficient discriminatory representation for visual interaction. The algorithm employs background suppression and a general approximation to body shape, applied within a particle filter framework, making use of integral images to maintain real-time performance. Furthermore, we present a novel method to disambiguate the hands of the subject and to predict the likely position of elbows. The final system is demonstrated segmenting multiple subjects from a cluttered scene at above real time operation.