Real time tracking with occlusion and illumination variations

The authors present a robust real time object tracking by image processing. A planar model defined by a center and few interest points of the object is used. This model choice allows to be robust to light variations and partial occlusions and a particle filter based tracker allows to recover from total occlusion of the object during a few seconds. This algorithm works at 15 Hz on a personal computer under Linux and is robust concerning both geometrical aspects as planar rotation and scale modification. Real experimentations prove the validity of the method for outdoor applications like vehicle tracking for adaptive cruise control.