Accurate appearance-based Bayesian tracking for maneuvering targets

We propose a tracking algorithm that combines the Mean Shift search in a Particle Filtering framework and a target representation that uses multiple semi-overlapping color histograms. The target representation introduces spatial information that accounts for rotation and anisotropic scaling without compromising the flexibility typical of color histograms. Moreover, the proposed tracker can generate a smaller number of samples than Particle Filter as it increases the particle efficiency by moving the samples toward close local maxima of the likelihood using Mean Shift. Experimental results show that the proposed representation improves the robustness to clutter and that, especially on highly maneuvering targets, the combined tracker Outperforms Particle Filter and Mean Shift in terms of accuracy in estimating the target size and position while generating only 25% of the samples used by Particle Filter. (C) 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.