Author_Institution :
Media Lab., MIT, Cambridge, MA, USA
Abstract :
The research topic of looking at people, that is, giving machines the ability to detect, track, and identify people and more generally, to interpret human behavior, has become a central topic in machine vision research. Initially thought to be the research problem that would be hardest to solve, it has proven remarkably tractable and has even spawned several thriving commercial enterprises. The principle driving application for this technology is “fourth generation” embedded computing: “smart” environments and portable or wearable devices. The key technical goals are to determine the computer´s context with respect to nearby humans (e.g., who, what, when, where, and why) so that the computer can act or respond appropriately without detailed instructions. The paper examines the mathematical tools that have proven successful, provides a taxonomy of the problem domain, and then examines the state of the art. Four areas receive particular attention: person identification, surveillance/monitoring, 3D methods, and smart rooms/perceptual user interfaces. Finally, the paper discusses some of the research challenges and opportunities
Keywords :
computer vision; computerised monitoring; face recognition; gesture recognition; image sensors; surveillance; user interfaces; 3D methods; fourth generation embedded computing; human behavior; machine vision; people detection; people identification; people tracking; perceptual user interfaces; smart environments; smart rooms; state-of-the-art; wearable computing; Application software; Biomedical monitoring; Computer aided instruction; Computerized monitoring; Embedded computing; Humans; Machine vision; Surveillance; Taxonomy; Wearable computers;
