Robust ambiguous target handling for visual object tracking

Abstract This paper presents a robust method of handling ambiguous targets (partial occlusion, split region or mixed state of the partial occlusion and the split region) for visual object tracking. The object model is a combination of bounding box features and expected object region. These object properties are very compact and allow us to track objects in a cluttered environment. The target state is classified in the first stage by a state classifier. The state classifier is defined from a weighted cross-correlation of normalized area and normalized distance which are defined from the comparison of background model- and the motion-based object detections. The correlation can categorize the target state by using the overlap quantity of the detected objects from the both object detections. If the target is merged state (partial occlusion), we will identify and track each object in the merged region by the bounding box features. If the targets are the split region, these regions are identified and grouped by the expected object region. If the target is the mixed state, we use the methods for handling the split and the merged region. Finally, experimental results show that the proposed method can deal with tracking in cluttered environments.