Qualitative tracking of 3-D objects using active contour networks

In this paper, we track changes in the appearance of the object as it moves from one frame to the next. At a symbolic level, an aspect graph clusters all the views of an object into a set of topologically distinct classes in terms of which surfaces of an object are visible from a given viewpoint (Koenderink and van Doom (1979). Two nodes (or aspects) in the aspect graph are connected by an arc if it is possible to directly move from a viewpoint in which the first aspect is visible to a viewpoint in which the second aspect is visible. Qualitatively, we can envision a tracking strategy which simply tracks an object as it moves from one node to another in the object´s aspect graph. Although it does not provide us with accurate pose of the object, it does qualitatively describe the motion of the object without the need for a CAD representation of the object