A Real-time Face Tracking Algorithm using Improved CamShift with Depth Information

In this paper, a new face tracking algorithm is proposed. The CamShift (Continuously adaptive mean SHIFT) algorithm shows unstable tracking when there exist objects with similar color to that of face in the background. This drawback of the CamShift is resolved by the proposed algorithm using Kinect's pixel-by-pixel depth information and the skin detection method to extract candidate skin regions in HSV color space. Additionally, even when the target face is disappeared, or occluded, the proposed algorithm makes it robust to this occlusion by the feature point matching. Through experimental results, it is shown that the proposed algorithm is superior in tracking performance to that of existing TLD (Tracking-Learning-Detection) algorithm, and offers faster processing speed. Also, it overcomes all the existing shortfalls of CamShift with almost comparable processing time.