CONTINUOUS PERSON TRACKING ACROSS MULTIPLE ACTIVE CAMERAS USING SHAPE AND COLOR CUES

This paper proposed a framework for handover method in continuously tracking a person of interest across cooperative pan-tilt-zoom (PTZ) cameras. The algorithm here is based on a robust non-parametric technique for climbing density gradients to find the peak of probability distributions called the mean shift algorithm. Most tracking algorithms use only one cue (such as color). The color features are not always discriminative enough for target localization because illumination or viewpoints tend to change. Moreover the background may be of a color similar to that of the target. In our proposed system, the continuous person tracking across cooperative PTZ cameras by mean shift tracking that using color and shape histogram to be feature distributions. Color and shape distributions of interested person are used to register the target person across cameras. For the first camera, we select interested person for tracking using skin color, cloth color and boundary of body. To handover tracking process between two cameras, the second camera receives color and shape cues of a target person from the first camera and using linear color calibration to help with handover process. Our experimental results demonstrate color and shape feature in mean shift algorithm is capable for continuously and accurately track the target person across cameras.