Decentralized multiple target tracking using netted collaborative autonomous trackers

• Published in: 2005 IEEE Computer Society Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR'05) Vol. 1; pp. 939 - 946 vol. 1
• Main Authors: Ting Yu, Ying Wu
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Published: IEEE 2005
• Subjects: Collaboration; Computer networks; Detectors; Distributed computing; Layout; Markov random fields; Object detection; State-space methods; Target tracking; Video sequences
• ISBN: 0769523722; 9780769523729
• ISSN: 1063-6919; 1063-6919
• DOI: 10.1109/CVPR.2005.120

This paper presents a decentralized approach to multiple target tracking. The novelty of this approach lies in the use of a set of autonomous while collaborative trackers to overcome the tracker coalescence problem with linear complexity. In this approach, the individual trackers are autonomous in the sense that they can select targets to track and evaluate themselves, and they are also collaborative since they need to compete for the targets against those trackers that are close to them through communication. The theoretical foundation of this new approach is based on the variational analysis of a Markov network that reveals the collaborative mechanism through fixed point iteration among these trackers and the existence of the equilibriums. In addition, a trained object detector is incorporated to help sense the potential newly appearing targets in the dynamic scene. Experimental results on challenging video sequences demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed method.