Head tracking system using image processing

영상처리를 이용한 머리의 움직임 추적 시스템

This paper is concerned with the development and evaluation of the camera calibration method for a real-time head tracking system. Tracking of head movements is important in the design of an eye-controlled human/computer interface and the area of virtual environment. We proposed a video-based head tracking system. A camera was mounted on the subject's head and it took the front view containing eight 3-dimensional reference points(passive retr0-reflecting markers) fixed at the known position(computer monitor). The reference points were captured by image processing board. These points were used to calculate the position (3-dimensional) and orientation of the camera. A suitable camera calibration method for providing accurate extrinsic camera parameters was proposed. The method has three steps. In the first step, the image center was calibrated using the method of varying focal length. In the second step, the focal length and the scale factor were calibrated from the Direct Linear Transformation (DLT) matrix obtained from the known position and orientation of the camera. In the third step, the position and orientation of the camera was calculated from the DLT matrix, using the calibrated intrinsic camera parameters. Experimental results showed that the average error of camera positions (3- dimensional) is about $0.53^{\circ}C$, the angular errors of camera orientations are less than $0.55^{\circ}C$and the data aquisition rate is about 10Hz. The results of this study can be applied to the tracking of head movements related to the eye-controlled human/computer interface and the virtual environment.