Maximum correntropy criterion based 3D head tracking with commodity depth camera

3D head tracking becomes easier with the depth image from Microsoft Kinect. However, the noise from face occlusion and illumination still affects the tracking quality. In this paper, we introduce the robust Maximum Correntropy Criterion (MCC) to the problem of 3D head tracking, to tackle these noises. Fortunately, MCC can handle arbitrarily distributed noises. To solve the MCC based cost function, we develop an effective two-stage optimization scheme with the half-quadric technology. A head tracking system that uses Miscrosoft Kinect is also developed based on the MCC formulation. The system is fully automatic and online, without need of offline training. Experimental results show that the system is very robust against partial occlusion, large motion and sudden illumination variations.