Robust Model-based Motion Tracking Through the Integration of Search and Estimation

A computer vision system has been developed for real-time motion tracking of 3-D objects, including those with variable internal parameters. This system provides for the integrated treatment of matching and measurement errors that arise during motion tracking. These two sources of error have very different distributions and are best handled by separate computational mechanisms. These errors can be treated in an integrated way by using the computation of variance in predicted feature measurements to determine the probability of correctness for each potential matching feature. In return, a best-first search procedure uses these probabilities to find consistent sets of matches, which eliminates the need to treat outliers during the analysis of measurement errors. The most reliable initial matches are used to reduce the parameter variance on further iterations, minimizing the amount of search required for matching more ambiguous features. These methods allow for much larger frame-to-frame motions than most previous approaches. The resulting system can robustly track models with many degrees of freedom while running on relatively inexpensive hardware. These same techniques can be used to speed verification during model-based recognition.