OBJECT DETECTION AND TRACKING IN TIME-VARYING AND BADLY ILLUMINATED OUTDOOR ENVIRONMENTS

A real-time method for object detection and tracking in outdoor enviro nments where illumination can be very low and not constant is presente d. A hierarchical (two levels) change detection method is employed to detect moving objects in the scene. At the first level, a focus-of-att ention stage is applied to individuate image areas containing moving o bjects; at the second level, each selected image area is inspected at higher accuracy to improve the detection probability and to obtain an accurate binary reconstruction of the object shape. A background updat ing procedure is used to adapt the background image to the changes in the scene. Then, an extended Kalman filter is applied to track multipl e objects entering the scene. Results are reported on real scenarios i n the presence of shadows, occlusions, light reflections, and bad envi ronmental conditions. (C) 1998 Society of Photo-Optical instrumentatio n Engineers.