Tracking of a non-rigid object via patch-based dynamic appearance modeling and adaptive Basin Hopping Monte Carlo sampling

We propose a novel tracking algorithm for the target of which geometric appearance changes drastically over time. To track it, we present a local patch-based appearance model and provide an efficient scheme to evolve the topology between local patches by on-line update. In the process of on-line update, the robustness of each patch in the model is estimated by a new method of measurement which analyzes the landscape of local mode of the patch. This patch can be moved, deleted or newly added, which gives more flexibility to the model. Additionally, we introduce the Basin Hopping Monte Carlo (BHMC) sampling method to our tracking problem to reduce the computational complexity and deal with the problem of getting trapped in local minima. The BHMC method makes it possible for our appearance model to consist of enough numbers of patches. Since BHMC uses the same local optimizer that is used in the appearance modeling, it can be efficiently integrated into our tracking framework. Experimental results show that our approach tracks the object whose geometric appearance is drastically changing, accurately and robustly.