A new stereo object tracking system using disparity motion vector

Abstract In this paper, a new stereo object tracking system using the disparity motion vector (DMV) is presented. In the proposed method, the time-sequential disparity maps are extracted from the sequence of the stereo input image pairs and then, the DMV defined as a disparity difference between two consecutive disparity maps is sequentially estimated from these disparity maps. Just like the motion vectors in the conventional video signals, the DMV provides us with motion information of a moving target by showing a relatively large change of the disparity values in the target areas. Accordingly, using this DMV the target area and its location coordinates can be detected. Basing on these locational data of a moving target, the pan/tilt embedded in the stereo camera system can be controlled and as a result, real-time stereo tracking of a moving target can be achieved. From some experiments with 9 frames of the stereo image pairs having 256 × 256 pixels, it is shown that the proposed DMV-based stereo object tracking system can track the moving target with a relatively low error ratio of about 3.05% on average.