Fast method for face location and tracking by distributed behaviour-based agents

The authors present a novel approach for fast human face location and tracking in colour image sequences. First, a number of colour-sensitive behaviour-based agents are uniformly distributed in the 2-D image environment to search the skin-like pixels and mark the face-like regions by activating their evolutionary behaviour. Then the shape information of each face candidate region is examined and the face regions are finally determined by fuzzy shape feature analysis. Experimental results show that the tracking speed is about 30 frames per second for a 160 /spl times/ 120 video size and 12 fps for a 320 /spl times/ 240 video size.

[1]  Anup Basu,et al.  Motion Tracking with an Active Camera , 1994, IEEE Trans. Pattern Anal. Mach. Intell..

[2]  Hyoung-Gon Kim,et al.  Facial Region Detection Using Range Color Information , 1998 .

[3]  Ioannis Pitas,et al.  A novel method for automatic face segmentation, facial feature extraction and tracking , 1998, Signal Process. Image Commun..

[4]  Anil K. Jain,et al.  Object tracking using deformable templates , 1998, Sixth International Conference on Computer Vision (IEEE Cat. No.98CH36271).

[5]  Alex Waibel,et al.  Tracking Human Faces in Real-Time, , 1995 .

[6]  Natan Peterfreund,et al.  Robust Tracking of Position and Velocity With Kalman Snakes , 1999, IEEE Trans. Pattern Anal. Mach. Intell..

[7]  Shaogang Gong,et al.  Tracking colour objects using adaptive mixture models , 1999, Image Vis. Comput..

[8]  Yuan Yan Tang,et al.  Adaptive Image Segmentation With Distributed Behavior-Based Agents , 1999, IEEE Trans. Pattern Anal. Mach. Intell..

[9]  Yihong Gong,et al.  Detection of Regions Matching Specified Chromatic Features , 1995, Comput. Vis. Image Underst..

[10]  Yoshiaki Shirai,et al.  Robust Visual Tracking by Integrating Various Cues , 1998 .

[11]  Nicholas R. Jennings,et al.  Intelligent agents: theory and practice , 1995, The Knowledge Engineering Review.

[12]  Yuan Yan Tang,et al.  An evolutionary autonomous agents approach to image feature extraction , 1997, IEEE Trans. Evol. Comput..

[13]  Tae-Woong Yoo,et al.  A fast algorithm for tracking human faces based on chromatic histograms , 1999, Pattern Recognit. Lett..

[14]  Ching Y. Suen,et al.  Identification of Fork Points on the Skeletons of Handwritten Chinese Characters , 1999, IEEE Trans. Pattern Anal. Mach. Intell..

[15]  Frederic Fol Leymarie,et al.  Tracking Deformable Objects in the Plane Using an Active Contour Model , 1993, IEEE Trans. Pattern Anal. Mach. Intell..

[16]  Hyung-Il Choi,et al.  Active models for tracking moving objects , 2000, Pattern Recognit..

[17]  Hiroshi Dohi,et al.  Man-Machine Interaction Using a Vision System with Dual Viewing Angles , 1997 .

[18]  Konstantinos N. Plataniotis,et al.  Automatic location and tracking of the facial region in color video sequences , 1999, Signal Process. Image Commun..

[19]  Mario Köppen,et al.  Design of image exploring agent using genetic programming , 1999, Fuzzy Sets Syst..

[20]  Alex Pentland,et al.  LAFTER: a real-time face and lips tracker with facial expression recognition , 2000, Pattern Recognit..

[21]  Shaogang Gong,et al.  Modelling facial colour and identity with Gaussian mixtures , 1998, Pattern Recognit..