Analyzing Video Sequences of Multiple Humans

This text describes some computer vision-based methods that analyze video sequences of humans. More specifically, methods for tracking multiple humans in a scene, estimating postures of a human body in 3D in real-time, and recognizing a person's behaviour (gestures or activities) are discussed. For the tracking algorithm, the authors developed a non-synchronous method that tracks multiple persons by exploiting a Kalman filter that is applied to multiple video sequences. For estimating postures, an algorithm is presented that locates the significant points which determine postures of a human body, in 3D in real-time. Human activities are recognized from a video sequence by the HMM (Hidden Markov Models)-based method that the authors pioneered. The effectiveness of the three methods is shown by experimental results. The posture estimation method described in this book is a world-leading method in that it can estimate postures in 3D in real-time. As described in this book, the posture estimation method can be applied to avatar-based telecommunication systems, which require realistic, real-time reproduction of human images.This work should prove a useful reference for both professional and academic researchers in the fields of computer vision and image processing, also, to those working in video surveillance and monitoring, virtual reality, computer graphics, pattern recognition, telecommunication, human-computer interface, and general computer science. It should also be suitable for use in graduate classes in computer vision or image processing.