Acceleration of a 3D target tracking algorithm using an application specific instruction set processor

In todaypsilas high-tech world, intelligent video-surveillance is becoming a part of everyday life. In addition to minimizing the need for constant monitoring by an operator, it can automatically perform tasks such as accident detection or estimation of vehicle speed. A particularly useful algorithm for video surveillance is three-dimensional target tracking but, since it is both quite computationally expensive and requires the use of two cameras, it is seldom used. In this paper, we concentrate on accelerating an implementation of 3D tracking using a multiprocessor ASIP architecture based on the Tensilica Xtensa processor. Our experiments show that a speedup factor of 22 can be achieved using an extensible platform expressly optimized for this application as opposed to using a general-purpose processor.