Title :
Markerless human tracking for industrial environments
Author :
Elshafie, Mohanad ; Bone, Gary M.
Author_Institution :
Dept. of Mech. Eng., McMaster Univ., Hamilton, ON
Abstract :
A markerless multiple-camera vision-based 3D human tracking method for industrial environments is presented. The method can track humans in the vicinity of moving robots without using skin color cues or articulated human models. It is robust to self-occlusions and to partial occlusions caused by the robot. Foreground pixels corresponding to humans are found by background subtraction. A convex polyhedron enclosing the human(s) is generated online by bounding the foreground pixels in 3D space. Experimental results are included for a single person and multiple persons walking near a moving PUMA robot in a cluttered environment. Reliable tracking at 11.4 Hz is demonstrated using four cameras and a Pentium 4 PC. The tracking data may be used for online robot collision avoidance.
Keywords :
computer vision; image sensors; industrial robots; mobile robots; object detection; production engineering computing; 3D human tracking; PUMA robot; convex polyhedron; foreground pixels; industrial environments; markerless human tracking; markerless multiple-camera vision; self-occlusions; Biological system modeling; Cameras; Humans; Legged locomotion; Orbital robotics; Robot sensing systems; Robot vision systems; Robustness; Service robots; Skin; 3D person tracking; Human tracking; Human-Robot interaction; Robot safety;
Conference_Titel :
Electrical and Computer Engineering, 2008. CCECE 2008. Canadian Conference on
Conference_Location :
Niagara Falls, ON
Print_ISBN :
978-1-4244-1642-4
Electronic_ISBN :
0840-7789
DOI :
10.1109/CCECE.2008.4564716
