Implementation of Disparity Information-based 3D Object Tracking

In this paper, a new 3D object tracking system using the disparity motion vector (DMV) is presented. In the proposed method, the time-sequential disparity maps are extracted from the sequence of the stereo input image pairs and these disparity maps are used to sequentially estimate the DMV defined as a disparity difference between two consecutive disparity maps Similarly to motion vectors in the conventional video signals, the DMV provides us with motion information of a moving target by showing a relatively large change in the disparity values in the target areas. Accordingly, this DMV helps detect the target area and its location coordinates. Based on these location data of a moving target, the pan/tilt embedded in the stereo camera system can be controlled and consequently achieve real-time stereo tracking of a moving target. From the results of experiments with 9 frames of the stereo image pairs having 256x256 pixels, it is shown that the proposed DMV-based stereo object tracking system can track the moving target with a relatively low error ratio of about 3.05 % on average.