Robust visual tracking based on online learning of joint sparse dictionary

In this paper, we propose a robust visual tracking algorithm based on online learning of a joint sparse dictionary. The joint sparse dictionary consists of positive and negative sub-dictionaries, which model foreground and background objects respectively. An online dictionary learning method is developed to update the joint sparse dictionary by selecting both positive and negative bases from bags of positive and negative image patches/templates during tracking. A linear classifier is trained with sparse coefficients of image patches in the current frame, which are calculated using the joint sparse dictionary. This classifier is then used to locate the target in the next frame. Experimental results show that our tracking method is robust against object variation, occlusion and illumination change.