Robust detection and tracking of multiple moving objects with 3d features by an uncalibrated monocular camera

Abstract

This paper presents an algorithm for detecting multiple moving objects in an uncalibrated image sequence by integrating their 2D and 3D information. The result describes the moving objects in terms of their number, relative position and motion. First, the objects are represented by image feature points, and the major group of point correspondences over two consecutive images is established by Random Sample Consensus (RANSAC). Then, their corresponding 3D points are reconstructed and clustering is performed on them to validate those belonging to the same object. This process is repeated until all objects are detected. This method is reliable on tracking multiple moving objects, even with partial occlusions and similar motions. Experiments on real image sequences are presented to validate the proposed algorithm. Applications of interest are video surveillance, augmented reality, robot navigation and scene recognition. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2009.