EURASIP Journal on Image and Video Processing
Volume 2008 (2008), Article ID 638073, 14 pages
doi:10.1155/2008/638073
Research Article

Robust Real-Time 3D Object Tracking with Interfering Background Visual Projections

Huan Jin1,2 and Gang Qian1,3

1Arts, Media and Engineering Program, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85287, USA
2Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85287, USA
3Department of Electrical Engineering, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85287, USA

Received 2 November 2007; Revised 8 March 2008; Accepted 9 May 2008

Academic Editor: Carlo Regazzoni

Copyright © 2008 Huan Jin and Gang Qian. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

This paper presents a robust real-time object tracking system for human computer interaction in mediated environments with interfering visual projection in the background. Two major contributions are made in our research to achieve robust object tracking. A reliable outlier rejection algorithm is developed using the epipolar and homography constraints to remove false candidates caused by interfering background projections and mismatches between cameras. To reliably integrate multiple estimates of the 3D object positions, an efficient fusion algorithm based on mean shift is used. This fusion algorithm can also reduce tracking errors caused by partial occlusion of the object in some of the camera views. Experimental results obtained in real life scenarios demonstrate that the proposed system is able to achieve decent 3D object tracking performance in the presence of interfering background visual projection.