Tracking of the Articulated Upper Body on Multi-View Stereo Image Sequences

We propose a novel method for tracking an articulated model in a 3D-point cloud. The tracking problem is formulated as the registration of two point sets, one of them parameterised by the model’s state vector and the other acquired from a 3D-sensor system. Finding the correct parameter vector is posed as a linear estimation problem, which is solved by means of a scaled unscented Kalman filter. Our method draws on concepts from the widely used iterative closest point registration algorithm (ICP), basing the measurement model on point correspondences established between the synthesised model point cloud and the measured 3D-data. We apply the algorithm to kinematically track a model of the human upper body on a point cloud obtained through stereo image processing from one or more stereo cameras. We determine torso position and orientation as well as joint angles of shoulders and elbows. The algorithm has been successfully tested on thousands of frames of real image data. Challenging sequences of several minutes length where tracked correctly. Complete processing time remains below one second per frame.