Constrained deformable superquadrics and nonrigid motion tracking

A physically based approach to the recovery of nonrigid 3-D motion and the tracking of nonrigid objects is presented. The approach makes use of deformable superquadrics, dynamics models that offer global deformation parameters which capture large-scale features and local deformation parameters which capture the details of complex shapes. The equations of motion governing the behavior of the models make them responsive to externally applied forces. The authors extend their prior formulation of these equations to include globally parameterized tapering and bending deformations. They further generalize the formulation to handle physically based point-to-point constraints between models. Such constraints enable one to automatically assemble object models from interconnected deformable superquadric parts. These composite models may be used to track the motions of articulated, flexible objects