Human position and head direction tracking in fisheye camera using randomized ferns and fisheye histograms of oriented gradients

• Published in: The Visual computer Vol. 36; no. 7; pp. 1443 - 1456
• Main Authors: Srisamosorn, Veerachart, Kuwahara, Noriaki, Yamashita, Atsushi, Ogata, Taiki, Shirafuji, Shouhei, Ota, Jun
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Berlin/Heidelberg Springer Berlin Heidelberg 01.07.2020; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Accuracy; Algorithms; Artificial Intelligence; Cameras; Computer Graphics; Computer Science; Datasets; Fisheye views; Histograms; Human body; Image Processing and Computer Vision; Original Article; Position errors; Sensors; Support vector machines; Surveillance; Tracking; Video surveillance; Human tracking; Fisheye camera; Head direction estimation
• ISSN: 0178-2789; 1432-2315
• DOI: 10.1007/s00371-019-01749-9

This paper proposes a system for tracking human position and head direction using fisheye camera mounted to the ceiling. This is believed to be the first system to estimate head direction from ceiling-mounted fisheye camera. Fisheye histograms of oriented gradients descriptor is developed as a substitute to the histograms of oriented gradients descriptor which has been widely used for human detection in perspective camera. Human body and head are detected by the proposed descriptor and tracked to extract head area for direction estimation. Direction estimation using randomized ferns is adapted to work with fisheye images by using the proposed descriptor, guided by the direction of movement. With experiments on available dataset and new dataset with ground truth, the direction can be estimated with average error below 40 ∘ , with head position error half of the head size.