Automatic bootstrapping and tracking of object contours

A new fully automatic object tracking and segmentation framework is proposed. The framework consists of a motion-based bootstrapping algorithm concurrent to a shape-based active contour. The shape-based active contour uses finite shape memory that is automatically and continuously built from both the bootstrap process and the active-contour object tracker. A scheme is proposed to ensure that the finite shape memory is continuously updated but forgets unnecessary information. Two new ways of automatically extracting shape information from image data given a region of interest are also proposed. Results demonstrate that the bootstrapping stage provides important motion and shape information to the object tracker. This information is found to be essential for good (fully automatic) initialization of the active contour. Further results also demonstrate convergence properties of the content of the finite shape memory and similar object tracking performance in comparison with an object tracker with unlimited shape memory. Tests with an active contour using a fixed-shape prior also demonstrate superior performance for the proposed bootstrapped finite-shape-memory framework and similar performance when compared with a recently proposed active contour that uses an alternative online learning model.     

Lasso约束下融和光流信息的DCF目标跟踪算法

视频目标跟踪是计算机视觉的基础问题之一。近来由于 discriminative correlation filter（DCF）跟踪器的高效性和鲁棒性,出现了许多基于DCF的目标跟踪算法。为了克服DCF跟踪器对运动模糊目标的不适应性,本文提出了一种利用Lasso约束并融入光流信息的目标跟踪算法。首先在跟踪器抽取特征通道块中融入光流特征。然后在通道块之后进行多特征融合。其次利用Lasso约束DCF跟踪器的目标函数。考虑到所约束的目标函数在定义域上不连续和目标跟踪的优化效率。最后,采用块坐标下降算法来优化所约束的目标函数。实验结果表明,与基于DCF视觉跟踪算法相比,所提出的算法可以有效的处理运动模糊目标,实现复杂环境下鲁棒的视觉目标跟踪。      

Fast and robust object tracking via Accept–Reject color histogram-based method

We present a new framework for real-time tracking method of complex non-rigid objects. This new method successfully coped with camera motion, partial occlusions, and target scale variations. The shape of the object tracker is approximated by an ellipse and its appearance by histogram based features derived from local image properties. We use an efficient search scheme (Accept–Reject color histogram-based method (AR), using Bhattacharyya kernel as a similarity measure) to find the image region with a histogram most similar to the target of object tracker. In this paper, we address the problem of scale/shape adaptation and orientation changes of the target. The proposed approach is compared with recent state-of-the-art algorithms. Extensive experiments are performed to testify the proposed method and validate its robustness and effectiveness to track the scale and orientation changes of the target in real-time.     

Robust shape tracking with multiple models in ultrasound images

This paper addresses object tracking in ultrasound images using a robust multiple model tracker. The proposed tracker has the following features: 1) it uses multiple dynamic models to track the evolution of the object boundary, and 2) it models invalid observations (outliers), reducing their influence on the shape estimates. The problem considered in this paper is the tracking of the left ventricle which is known to be a challenging problem. The heart motion presents two phases (diastole and systole) with different dynamics, the multiple models used in this tracker try to solve this difficulty. In addition, ultrasound images are corrupted by strong multiplicative noise which prevents the use of standard deformable models. Robust estimation techniques are used to address this difficulty. The multiple model data association (MMDA) tracker proposed in this paper is based on a bank of nonlinear filters, organized in a tree structure. The algorithm determines which model is active at each instant of time and updates its state by propagating the probability distribution, using robust estimation techniques.     

Real-time and robust visual tracking with scene-perceptual memory

Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) based aerial visual tracking is one of the research hotspots in computer vision. However, the mainstream trackers for UAV still have two shortcomings: (1) the accuracy of correlation filter tracker is greatly improved with more complex model, it impedes accuracy-speed trade-off. (2) object occlusion and camera motion in the aerial tracking scene also seriously restrict the application of aerial tracking. To address these problems, and inspired by AutoTrack tracker, we propose an aerial correlation filtering tracker based on scene-perceptual memory, Fast-AutoTrack. Firstly, to perceive and judge tracking anomalies, such as object occlusion and camera motion, inspired by the peak sidelobe ratio and AutoTrack, a confidence score is designed by perceiving and remembering the changing trend of the confidence and the local historical confidence. Secondly, after tracking anomaly occurring, several search regions are predicted based on the local object motion trend and the Spatio-temporal context information for object re-detection. Finally, to accelerate the model updating, the perceptual hashing algorithm (PHA) is used to obtain the similarity of the search regions between two adjacent frames. On typical aerial tracking datasets UAVDT, UAV123@10fps, and DTB70, Fast-AutoTrack run 71.4% faster than AutoTrack with almost equal accuracy and show favorable accuracy-speed trade-off.     

基于关键特征信息感知和在线自适应掩模的孪生网络目标跟踪

近年来,孪生网络在视觉目标跟踪的应用给跟踪器性能带来了极大的提升,可以同时兼顾准确率和实时性。然而,孪生网络跟踪器的准确率在很大程度上受到限制。为了解决上述问题,该文基于通道注意力机制,创新地提出了关键特征信息感知模块来增强网络模型的判别能力,使网络聚焦于目标的卷积特征变化;在此基础上,该文还提出了一种在线自适应掩模策略,根据在线学习到的互相关层输出状态,自适应掩模后续帧,以此来突出前景目标。在OTB100, GOT-10k数据集上进行实验验证,所提跟踪器在不影响实时性的前提下,准确率相较于基准有了显著提升,并且在遮挡、尺度变化以及背景杂乱等复杂场景下具有鲁棒的跟踪效果。     

基于多示例学习和随机蕨丛检测的在线目标跟踪

基于检测的目标跟踪方法目前在计算机视觉领域受到了广泛的关注,这类方法通过训练判别分类器将目标对象从背景中分离出来;分类器的训练是根据当前的跟踪状态从当前帧中提取正负样本来进行,但训练样本的不准确将导致分类器退化产生漂移。该文提出一种能够有效克服目标漂移的跟踪算法,采用检测器和跟踪器相结合的框架,利用中值流算法作为跟踪器,提高跟踪点的可靠性;级联若干个随机蕨弱分类器构成强分类器作为检测器;用在线多示例学习方法更新检测器,提高检测精度;最后将检测器、跟踪器的结果相融合得到最终的目标位置。实验结果表明,与其它方法相比,该方法对目标漂移有更强的鲁棒性。     

融合颜色直方图响应的时空上下文跟踪算法

时空上下文(STC)跟踪算法在特征表达、尺度自适应策略等方面存在缺陷,当出现目标突然形变、局部遮挡或尺度变化等情况时,跟踪器的性能会严重退化。通过对STC算法进行改进,提出了一种融合颜色直方图响应的时空上下文跟踪算法。基于颜色统计的模型对运动模糊和目标形变等影响因素不敏感,和时空上下文模型具有良好的互补性质,在响应层融合后能够提升算法的鲁棒性。此外,采用基于多尺度金字塔模型的尺度搜索策略替换STC算法中原有的尺度估计策略,进行更精准的自适应尺度估计。在大规模公开数据集上的测试结果表明,本文算法在不同影响因素的复杂环境下展现了更为良好的跟踪性能和适应性,并且平均跟踪速度达到134.2帧/秒。     

基于时间一致性约束的核互相关器目标跟踪

针对相关滤波器跟踪算法在目标快速运动、遮挡和表观变化时易发生跟踪漂移或者丢失的问题,提出一种基于时间一致性和核互相关器的目标跟踪算法。该算法通过引入对图像噪声和杂波更具鲁棒性的核互相关向量,能够更精确地预测目标的仿射变化。同时,在学习过程中引入时间一致性约束,以解决因核相关器时间退化导致的跟踪漂移问题。最后,采用主灰度分量逆映射来提升跟踪器应对目标部分遮挡的能力。在公开的OTB100标准目标跟踪数据集中与提供的基准算法和其他性能更加先进的相关滤波算法进行对比,该算法平均跟踪速度为41f/s,相对fDSST和SAMF算法,其跟踪精度分别提升15.6%和6.4%,跟踪成功率分别提升33.3%和6.1%。实验结果表明,该算法在目标快速运动、遮挡或表观变化时仍能精确地跟踪目标。     

Numerical study on the properties of an active sun tracker for solar streetlight

In this work, a new active sun tracker for solar streetlight combined with photoelectric tracking mode mainly and time-based tracking mode auxiliary was proposed. The sun tracker was designed through three aspects: mechanical structure, electrical system and control procedure. Then, a proper model named Available Energy Absorption Model was built to study the energy efficiency. The numerical average value of energy efficiency in a year is 36% which shows the superiority of the tracking mode on the available energy absorption. Lastly, the mechanical properties analysis of the tracker was implemented on two aspects which include motion simulation and wind resistance. The numerical results prove the feasibility of the double-slider mechanism and the reliability of the tracker’s strength.     

Segmentation and tracking of moving objects for content-based videocoding

To enable content-based functionalities in video coding, a decomposition of the scene into physical objects is required. Such objects are normally not characterised by homogeneous colour, intensity, or optical flow. Therefore, conventional techniques based on these low-level features cannot perform the desired segmentation. The authors address segmentation and tracking of moving objects and present a new video object plane (VOP) segmentation algorithm that extracts semantically meaningful objects. A morphological motion filter detects physical objects by identifying areas that are moving differently from the background. A new filter criterion is introduced that measures the deviation of the estimated local motion from the synthesised global motion. A two-dimensional binary model is derived for the object of interest and tracked throughout the sequence by a Hausdorff object tracker. To accommodate for rotations and changes in shape, the model is updated every frame by a two-stage method that accounts for rigid and non-rigid moving parts of the object. The binary model then guides the actual VOP extraction, whereby a novel boundary post-processor ensures high boundary accuracy. Experimental results demonstrate the performance of the proposed algorithm     

A novel Siamese network object tracking algorithm based on tensor space mapping and memory-learning mechanism

The tracker is a core component of the tracking algorithm, but it is difficult to identify the object, which is a challenge to improve the tracking accuracy. This paper proposes a Siamese network-based tracking algorithm based on tensor space mapping and memory-learning mechanisms. Firstly, the source image is mapped to the tensor space to serialize the feature distributions. Then the gating mechanism is used to extract the association information about the adjacent state, which guides the update of the subsequent state, and the interactive information on the objects is used to locate the object. On this basis, a memory-learning module is built to traverse and extract the fine-grained features, which can filter the semantic information of the object learned by the tracker. As a result, the tracking accuracy is enhanced. The experiments show that the proposed algorithm has better performance than that of the comparison methods in the OTB100 data set and the VOT data set.     

一种尺度自适应的粒子滤波跟踪算法

针对复杂背景下目标发生旋转、遮挡、尺度变化和摄像机运动时不能实时跟踪到目标的问题,将最佳核窗宽方法和信息量度量方法相结合,用于粒子滤波框架中.各个粒子通过均值偏移来搜索峰值,同时加入了相应的遮挡策略.实验结果表明,该算法在目标发生旋转、遮挡后仍能很好地跟踪到目标.同时跟踪窗能随目标尺度的大小变化作相应调整,大大提高了算法的实时性和稳健性.     

Time efficient ghost removal for motion detection in visual surveillance systems

Segmentation of foreground objects is an important and essential task for many systems that aim to carry out motion tracking, object classification, event detection and is used in applications such as traffic monitoring and analysis, access control to special areas, human and vehicle identification and the detection of anomalous behaviour. The most common approach for detecting moving objects is background subtraction, in which each frame of a video sequence is compared against a background model. A large number of background subtraction algorithms have been proposed [1], but problems remain for moving object identification under certain conditions. One of the toughest problems in background subtraction is caused by the detection of false objects when an object that belongs to the background (e.g. after staying stationary for some time) starts to move away. This generates what are called `ghosts?. It is important to address the problem because ghost objects will adversely affect many tasks such as object classification, tracking and event analysis (e.g. abandoned item detection). This Letter focuses on the problem of ghost identification and elimination. We used a state-of-the-art industrial tracker which includes basic background subtraction and object tracking. Then we included our ghost detection algorithm into the basic tracker to identify and eliminate ghosts. Finally, we systematically evaluated and compared performance on urban traffic video sequences.     

Robust Multithreaded Object Tracker through Occlusions for Spatial Augmented Reality

A spatial augmented reality (SAR) system enables a virtual image to be projected onto the surface of a real-world object and the user to intuitively control the image using a tangible interface. However, occlusions frequently occur, such as a sudden change in the lighting environment or the generation of obstacles. We propose a robust object tracker based on a multithreaded system, which can track an object robustly through occlusions. Our multithreaded tracker is divided into two threads: the detection thread detects distinctive features in a frame-to-frame manner, and the tracking thread tracks features periodically using an optical-flow-based tracking method. Consequently, although the speed of the detection thread is considerably slow, we achieve real-time performance owing to the multithreaded configuration. Moreover, the proposed outlier filtering automatically updates a random sample consensus distance threshold for eliminating outliers according to environmental changes. Experimental results show that our approach tracks an object robustly in real-time in an SAR environment where there are frequent occlusions occurring from augmented projection images.     

L2范数正则化鲁棒编码视觉跟踪

针对基于稀疏表示的视觉跟踪计算效率低和易于产生模型漂移的不足,该文提出一种基于L2范数正则化鲁棒编码的视觉跟踪方法。该方法利用L2范数正则化鲁棒编码求解候选目标的编码系数,以粒子滤波为框架,利用候选目标的加权重建误差建立似然模型跟踪目标。为了适应目标的变化并克服模型漂移问题,利用L2范数正则化鲁棒编码估计当前目标的加权矩阵用于遮挡检测,根据遮挡检测结果实现模型更新。对提出的跟踪方法进行实验的结果表明:与现有跟踪方法相比,该方法具有较优的跟踪性能。     

Conditional filters for image sequence-based tracking--application to point tracking.

In this paper, a new conditional formulation of classical filtering methods is proposed. This formulation is dedicated to image sequence-based tracking. These conditional filters allow solving systems whose measurements and state equation are estimated from the image data. In particular, the model that is considered for point tracking combines a state equation relying on the optical flow constraint and measurements provided by a matching technique. Based on this, two point trackers are derived. The first one is a linear tracker well suited to image sequences exhibiting global-dominant motion. This filter is determined through the use of a new estimator, called the conditional linear minimum variance estimator. The second one is a nonlinear tracker, implemented from a conditional particle filter. It allows tracking of points whose motion may be only locally described. These conditional trackers significantly improve results in some general situations. In particular, they allow for dealing with noisy sequences, abrupt changes of trajectories, occlusions, and cluttered background.     

基于主分量寻踪的鲁棒视觉跟踪

传统子空间跟踪易受到模型漂移的影响而导致跟踪失败.针对此问题,本文提出一种基于主分量寻踪的鲁棒视觉跟踪方法.该方法以多个模板张成的子空间作为目标表观模型,利用主分量寻踪求解候选目标的误差分量,在粒子滤波框架下利用候选目标的误差分量估计最优状态参数.为了适应目标表观变化并克服模型漂移,本文提出一种模板更新方法.当跟踪结果与目标模板相似时,该方法利用跟踪结果更新目标模板,否则利用跟踪结果的低秩分量更新目标模板.在多个具有挑战性的图像序列上的实验结果表明:与现有跟踪方法相比,文中的跟踪方法具有较优的跟踪性能.     

Robust Struck tracker via color Haar-like feature and selective updating

Recently, Struck—a tracker based on structured support vector machine, received great attention as a consequence of its superior performance on many challenging scenes. In this work, we present an improved Struck tracker by using color Haar-like features and effective selective updating. First, we integrate color information into Haar-like features in a simple way, which models the spatial and color information simultaneously without increasing the computational complexity. Second, we make selective model updates according to the tracking status of the object. This prevents inferior patterns resulted by occlusions, abrupt appearance or illumination changes from being added to object model, which decreases the risk of model drift problem. The experimental results indicate that the proposed tracking algorithm outperforms the original Struck by a remarkable margin in precision and accuracy, and it is competitive with other state-of-the-art trackers on a tracking benchmark of 50 challenging sequences.