Combining an Edge-Based Method and a Direct Method for Robust 3D Object Tracking

In the field of augmented reality, edge-based methods have been popularly used in tracking textureless 3D objects. However, edge-based methods are inherently vulnerable to cluttered backgrounds. Another way to track textureless or poorly-textured 3D objects is to directly align image intensity of 3D object between consecutive frames. Although the direct methods enable more reliable and stable tracking compared to using local features such as edges, they are more sensitive to occlusion and less accurate than the edge-based methods. Therefore, we propose a method that combines an edge-based method and a direct method to leverage the advantages from each approach. Experimental results show that the proposed method is much robust to both fast camera (or object) movements and occlusion while still working in real time at a frame rate of 18 Hz. The tracking success rate and tracking accuracy were improved by up to 84% and 1.4 pixels, respectively, compared to using the edge-based method or the direct method solely.

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