Active Monocular Tracking with Temporal Integration of Visual Cues

In this paper we address the problem of tracking a moving target by a monocular observer. Tracking a moving target is one of the basic functionalities of any active vision system and may be used to retrieve important information about the target/observer 3D motion, shape, etc. The strategy we present is based on the integration of correlation based techniques together with active contours, using a Kalman filtering approach. The active eye system consists on a camera mounted on a pan & tilt unit. We describe in detail the motion algorithms used and the control system design issues. Due to some simplifications of the motion algorithms, the overall operating frequency is about 6Hz. The system is robust both to changes in the illumination and multiple moving objects in cluttered environments. Results are presented and discussed.

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