Real-Time Tracking of Moving Objects with an Active Camera

This article is concerned with the design and implementation of a system for real-time monocular tracking of a moving object using the two degrees of freedom of a camera platform. Figure-ground segregation is based on motion without making anya prioriassumptions about the object form. Using only the first spatiotemporal image derivatives, substraction of the normal optical flow induced by camera motion yields the object image motion. Closed-loop control is achieved by combining a stationary Kalman estimator with an optimal Linear Quadratic Regulator. The implementation on a pipeline architecture enables a servo rate of 25 Hz. We study the effects of time-recursive filtering and fixed-point arithmetic in image processing and we test the performance of the control algorithm on controlled motion of objects.

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