A Color Tracker Employing a Two-dimensional Color Histogram Under Changeable Illumination

This paper describes a robust color tracker employing an updateable two-dimensional color histogram with an anisotropic asymmetric Gaussian distribution model. A robust color tracking is achieved by updating the color model employing two-dimensional histogram of the h-s plane of the hsv color space. Performance of the proposed technique is robust to unknown illumination change, because the color model is acquired directly from the object and updated iteratively. Moreover, an anisotropic asymmetric Gaussian distribution model is adopted as a model of changeable color range of the object. The color model is added and deleted one by one in the update process. Not very different color is added and quite different color is discarded by estimating the changeable color range of the object. A color tracking system with a pan-tilt camera was developed and, using the system, performance of the proposed technique was examined in a various illumination conditions. The system achieved robust tracking of specified color in the experiment