ENLIGHTEN3D

By Christian Laforte

Researchers just unveiled a promising solution to the challenging problem of automatically detecting and tracking multiple people in cluttered scenes using a single, potentially moving camera.

The paper was published at CVPR 2008 this week:

People-Tracking-by-Detection and People-Detection-by-Tracking (PDF)

Mykhaylo Andriluka, Stefan Roth, Bernt Schiele

Andriluka and his colleagues have also published demonstration videos: video 1, video 2.

Their solution relies on a model for pedestrian detection, which can identify articulated parts of a pedestrian (e.g. leg, arm, head) in a single image with a higher accuracy than previous techniques. The model is trained on a set of human-annotated videos. To further increase the accuracy, sequences of images are analyzed to detect tracks. This both decreases the number of false positives (i.e. detected pedestrians where no one is present) and enables the system to detect partially occluded people in a crowded scene. The system can also identify a probable pose for each tracked pedestrian and keep tracking him as he becomes temporarily occluded, e.g. passing in front of a car.

Although the technology is not flawless (e.g. it still misses pedestrians farther away), it is very promising and the applications are numerous. The paper mentions video surveillance in airports and train stations. It is conceivable that in a couple of years, a computer can track thousands of people as they enter and leave public places, noticing unusual activities along the way (e.g. suitcases that are left on the ground for an extended period of time).

This kind of solution could also help reduce theft, e.g. in grocery self-checkouts. Finally, for the entertainment industry this paves the way to non-intrusive motion capture for entire crowds.

Can you think of other applications of this technology?

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