Online learning of robust facial feature trackers

This paper presents a head pose and facial feature estimation technique that works over a wide range of pose variations without a priori knowledge of the appearance of the face. Using simple LK trackers, head pose is estimated by Levenberg-Marquardt (LM) pose estimation using the feature tracking as constraints. Factored sampling and RANSAC are employed to both provide a robust pose estimate and identify tracker drift by constraining outliers in the estimation process. The system provides both a head pose estimate and the position of facial features and is capable of tracking over a wide range of head poses.