A Real-Time Object Tracking System Using a Particle Filter

Particle filters have attracted much attention due to their robust tracking performance in cluttered environments. Particle filters maintain multiple hypotheses simultaneously and use a probabilistic motion model to predict the position of the moving object, and this constitutes a bottleneck to the use of particle filtering in real-time systems due to the expensive computations required. In order to track moving objects in real-time without delay and loss of image sequences, a particle filter algorithm specifically designed for a circuit and the circuit of the object tracking algorithm using the particle filter are proposed. This circuit is designed by VHDL (VHSIC hardware description language), and implemented in an FPGA (field programmable gate array). All of the functions of the proposed particle filter used to track moving objects are implemented in the FPGA. The object tracking system employing this circuit is implemented and then its performance is measured