Object Motion Tracking using a Moving Direction Estimate and Color Updates

Abstract

This paper presents a direction detection and tracking object color update algorithm used to track moving objects that change colors. Different from traditional color-based tracking methods, which use an initial color distribution in order to track objects as long as the object carries the full or partial initial color, this method introduces a color update method used to quickly find the new object color in a new location if the object changes its color partially or completely; the updated color is then used to locate the object. In our algorithm, an initial color pattern is used to track an object using the color. During the tracking, an object's new location is at first estimated and then used to detect any color change. If the color has changed, a new color pattern is updated based on the changes in the previous color distribution, and then the new color pattern is used to calculate the current location of the object. This algorithm utilizes the property that the movement of an object can be estimated either by using the object's shadow or by background subtraction. The implementation of our algorithm results in an effective real-time object tracking. The validity of the approach is illustrated by the presentation of experiment results obtained using the methods described in this paper.