Real-time 3D Head Tracking and Head Gesture Recognition

This paper proposes a fast 3D head tracking method that is working robustly under a variety of difficult conditions such as the rapidly changing pose, head movement and illumination. First, we obtain the pose robustness by using the 3D cylindrical head model (CHM) and dynamic template. Second, we also obtain the robustness about the fast head movement by using the dynamic template. Third, we obtain the illumination robustness by modeling the illumination basis vectors and by adding them to the previous input image to adapt the current input image. Experimental results show that the proposed head tracking method outperforms the other tracking method and it tracks the head successfully even if the head moves fast under the rapidly changing poses and illuminations. The proposed head tracking method has a versatile applications such as the head gesture recognition for the human robot interaction, the head gesture TV remote controller for the handicapped people, and the drawing tool by the head movement for the entertainment.