Implementation of an improved real-time object tracking algorithm using brightness feature information and color information of object

As technology related to digital imaging equipment is developed and generalized, digital imaging system is used for various purposes in fields of society. The object tracking technology from digital image data in real time is one of the core technologies required in various fields such as security system and robot system. Among the existing object tracking technologies, cam shift technology is a technique of tracking an object using color information of an object. Recently, digital image data using infrared camera functions are widely used due to various demands of digital image equipment. However, the existing cam shift method can not track objects in image data without color information. Our proposed tracking algorithm tracks the object by analyzing the color if valid color information exists in the digital image data, otherwise it generates the lightness feature information and tracks the object through it. The brightness feature information is generated from the ratio information of the width and the height of the area divided by the brightness. Experimental results shows that our tracking algorithm can track objects in real time not only in general image data including color information but also in image data captured by an infrared camera.