Tracking people interacting with objects

• Published in: 2010 IEEE Computer Society Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition pp. 747 - 754
• Main Authors: Kjellström, H, Kragić, D, Black, M J
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Published: IEEE 01.06.2010
• Series: IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
• Subjects: Biological system modeling; Body tracking; Computer science; Computer vision; Content addressable storage; Degrees of freedom; Environmental constraints; Environmental objects; Explicit models; Gravity; Ground planes; High-dimensional; Human motions; Human Tracking; Humans; Information technology; Informationsteknik; Kinematics; Layout; Monocular cameras; Object detection; State-space methods; TECHNOLOGY; TEKNIKVETENSKAP; Three dimensional; Tracking; Tracking problem
• ISBN: 1424469848; 9781424469840
• ISSN: 1063-6919; 1063-6919
• DOI: 10.1109/CVPR.2010.5540140

While the problem of tracking 3D human motion has been widely studied, most approaches have assumed that the person is isolated and not interacting with the environment. Environmental constraints, however, can greatly constrain and simplify the tracking problem. The most studied constraints involve gravity and contact with the ground plane. We go further to consider interaction with objects in the environment. In many cases, tracking rigid environmental objects is simpler than tracking high-dimensional human motion. When a human is in contact with objects in the world, their poses constrain the pose of body, essentially removing degrees of freedom. Thus what would appear to be a harder problem, combining object and human tracking, is actually simpler. We use a standard formulation of the body tracking problem but add an explicit model of contact with objects. We find that constraints from the world make it possible to track complex articulated human motion in 3D from a monocular camera.