Newsgroups: sci.image.processing
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From: koller@ecrc.de (Dieter Koller)
Subject: Re: Movement tracking
Message-ID: <D0qsIp.2sE@ecrc.de>
Sender: news@ecrc.de
Reply-To: koller@ecrc.de
Organization: "European Computer-Industry Research Centre GmbH, Munich, Germany"
References:  <11291@gos.ukc.ac.uk>
Date: Tue, 13 Dec 1994 09:18:24 GMT
Lines: 92

In article <11291@gos.ukc.ac.uk>, dl6@ukc.ac.uk (D.Lombardo) writes:
> 
> Have vigorously searched the library for ideas on how to track cars along
> roads but, have come up with nothing. 
> 
> The problem is that having processed a sequence of pictures showing a car
> moving down a road, I am unable to seperate the car from other objects,
> such as trees ,sign posts, or even the road. 
> 
> If anyone knows of a workable method or, has any information about image
> subtraction, please forward any information.
> 
> I have only got as far as obtaioning the outline of all objects in the
> images.
> 

I spent a lot of time on exactly this topic.
It's actually not that difficult if you are dealing with a stationary
camera, where you can perform a motion segmentation based on image
differencing, or more sophisticated, optical flow. The problem of motion
detection is much harder if you are using a 'paning' (moving) camera. 
Once you've detected a moving object (car) you can apply a more or
less simple Kalman filter for tracking.

I came up with two different solutions:

@Article{KolDan93,
   author = "D. Koller and K. Daniilidis and H.-H.  Nagel",
   title = "Model-Based Object Tracking in Monocular Image Sequences of Road Traffic Scenes",
   Journal = "Int'l Journal of Computer Vision",
   Volume={10},
   Number={3},
   Pages = {257--281},
   year = "1993" }

@inproceedings{KolWebMal94,
   author = "D. Koller and J. Weber and J. Malik",
   title = "Robust Multiple Car Tracking with Occlusion Reasoning",
   booktitle = "Proc. Third European Conference on Computer Vision",
   address = "Stockholm, Sweden, May 2-6, 1994, J.-O. Eklundh (ed.),
             Lecture Notes in Computer Science {\bf 800-801}, Springer-Verlag",
   Pages = "189--196",
   year = "1994" }

In this papers you'll find lots of references. Other papers worth checking out are:

@Article{MeyerBouthemy94,
   Author = "F. Meyer and P. Bouthemy",
   Title = "Region-Based Tracking Using Affine Motion in Long Image Sequence",
   Journal = "Computer Vision, Graphics, and Image Processing: Image Understanding",
   Volume = "60",
   Number = "2",
   Pages = "119--140",
   year = "1994" }

@INPROCEEDINGS{MeyerBouthemy93,
    AUTHOR="F. Meyer and P. Bouthemy",
    TITLE="Exploiting the Temporal Coherence of Motion for Linking Partial
    Spatiotemporal Trajectories",
    BOOKTITLE="Proc. IEEE Conf. Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition",
    Address="New York City, NY, June 15-17",
    YEAR="1993",
    PAGES="746--747"
}

@InProceedings(Worrall91,
   Author="A.D. Worrall and R.F. Marslin and G.D. Sullivan and K.D. Baker",
   Title="Model-Based Tracking",
   Booktitle="Proc. British Machine Vision Conference",
   Address=""Glasgow, UK, Sept. 24-26",
   Pages="310--318",
   Year=1991
   )

@InProceedings(Marslin91,
   Author="R.F. Marslin and G.D. Sullivan and K.D. Baker",
   Title="Kalman Filters in Constrained Model-Based Tracking",
   Booktitle="Proc. British Machine Vision Conference",
   Address="Glasgow, UK, Sept. 24-26",
   Pages="371--374",
   Year=1991
   )


Good luck,

 -Dieter

-- 
 Dr. Dieter KOLLER
 European Computer-Industry Research Centre   Tel: +49 (89) 92699-109
 Arabellastr 17, 81925 Muenchen, GERMANY.     Email:   koller@ecrc.de
