Learning based particle filtering object tracking for visible-light systems

We propose a novel object tracking framework based on online learning scheme that can work robustly in challenging scenarios. Firstly, a learning-based particle filter is proposed with color and edge-based features. We train a support vector machine (SVM) classifier with object and background information and map the outputs into probabilities, then the weight of particles in a particle filter can be calculated by the probabilistic outputs to estimate the state of the object. Secondly, the tracking loop starts with Lucas–Kanade (LK) affine template matching and follows by learning-based particle filter tracking. Lucas–Kanade method estimates errors and updates object template in the positive samples dataset, and learning-based particle filter tracker will start if the LK tracker loses the object. Finally, SVM classifier evaluates every tracked appearance to update the training set or restart the tracking loop if necessary. Experimental results show that our method is robust to challenging light, scale and pose changing, and test on eButton image sequence also achieves satisfactory tracking performance.