Color data provides more
information that can be used for tracking, but it does not fundamentally solve the
tracking problem.
This is similar to the object recognition problem in computer vision; color can be useful
but in most cases it does not make the underlying recognition problem easy to solve. Even
with color information, both offensive and defensive football player uniforms can blend
with background objects. Using color does not solve the tracking problems caused by
non-rigid, erratically moving objects, and the tracking would still require methods for
dealing with approximate models. Finally, the color distinctions between objects like
offensive players and officials are often subtle, especially given noisy color data.
Our tracking method should perform better using color data, but we have only used
grayscale imagery with the football system. However, a simplified version of the algorithm
described here has been used for real-time tracking of multiple people in an interactive
environment called the KidsRoom.
Color was used extensively in that system. Vismod TR#403
describes the algorithm.
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