M.I.T Media Laboratory Perceptual Computing Section Technical Report No. 353

published in IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence July 1997, vol 19, no 7, pp. 780-785 Pfinder: Real-Time Tracking of the Human Body

Christopher Wren, Ali Azarbayejani, Trevor Darrell, Alex Pentland
MIT Media Laboratory Preceptual Computing Section
20 Ames Street; Cambridge MA 02139 USA
{cwren, ajazar, trevor, sandy}@media.mit.edu
http://pfinder.www.media.mit.edu/projects/pfinder/

Abstract:

Pfinder is a real-time system for tracking people and interpreting thier behavior. It runs at 10Hz on a standard SGI Indy computer, and has performed reliably on thousands of people in many different physical locations. The system uses a multi-class statistical model of color and shape to obtain a 2-D representation of head and hands in a wide range of viewing conditions. Pfinder has been successfully used in a wide range of applications including wireless interfaces, video databases, and low-bandwidth coding.

 
• Introduction
• Background
• Steady State Tracking
  • Modeling The Person
  • Modeling The Scene
  • The Analysis Loop
• Initialization
  • Learning The Scene
  • Detect Person
  • Building the Person Model
• Limitations
• Performance
• Applications
  • A Modular Interface
  • Gesture Control for ALIVE, SURVIVE
  • Recognition of American Sign Language
  • Avatars and Telepresence
• Hardware
• Conclusion
• References
• About this document ...