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Predator Object Tracking Algorithm

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31–40 of 81 posts

Re: Predator Object Tracking Algorithm

#31
post #23

The key thing seems not to be the specific algorithm, but the idea of using images obtained during performance for training - an algorithm that can do that. An early prototype algorithm, with lots of room for tweaking - and there are likely radically different learning algorithms, as yet untried or undiscovered, that work better. It seems that in the past, performance images has been religiously separated from traini…

No offense, but I'm gonna trust the guy who did this for his PhD when he says that it was novel and difficult :)

Re: Predator Object Tracking Algorithm

#32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably because this is just 2D tracking rather than 3D mapping. But tracking can be applied to mapping, for example: http://www.robots.ox.ac.uk/~gk/PTAM/ So the question is, can predator be used to improve mapping? AFAIK, that would require a) automatically selecting trackable objects and b) tracking many of them simultaneously. That PTAM technique tracks thousands, but with tracking this reliable, you might get by…

"AFAIK, that would require a) automatically selecting trackable objects and b) tracking many of them simultaneously." I'm not really sure I understood you, but this two problems are already solved. Hugin[1] for example has automatic control point generation for photo stitching. Were you talking about something else? [1] http://hugin.sourceforge.net/releases/2010.4.0/en.shtml

Yeah, there are many ways to detect features but I haven't read the paper yet and I don't know what kind of features it wants and if there are any problems with choosing them automatically. Like, can it group features into distinct objects without a human pointing them out?

Re: Predator Object Tracking Algorithm

#33

As this doesn't seem like an April fools joke (some of the papers were published last year :-)) its interesting to think about it in the context of what it might change. That being said I don't doubt for a minute that the university has locked up as much of the technology as possible in patents but that is another story. We can speculate about what it will be like in 20 years when people can do this without infringin…

Depending on how well the computational load can be reduced to hardware small systems could provide for head mounted tracking systems He's clearly developing it on his laptop with a shitty webcam. That's why this is amazing. Screw robotic manufacturing, this is for my phone.

Phone != Laptop.

It says he's running on a "Intel Core 2 Duo CPU 2.4 GHz, 2 GB RAM" according to his website. As a good rule of thumb, computer vision runs about an order of magnitude slower (10x) on a phone (like an iPhone) than on a desktop/laptop.

Also - a crappy webcam actually makes things computationally easier because there's less data to deal with. In a lot of computer vision algorithms the first step is to take input and resize it to something that can be computed on in a reasonable time frame.

Re: Predator Object Tracking Algorithm

#34
Ok so the fact that he has produced this himself, using off-the-shelf commodity laptops etc is really great.

But this technology doesn't seem new to me - technology already exists for surveillance cameras in police and military helicopters to track an object like a car and keep it in vision as the helicopter turns and maneuvers.

Likewise, facial recognition - both statically and within a video stream - isn't new either.

Not taking anything away from the guy, but just wondering what it is I'm not getting that is new/amazing with this particular implementation?

Re: Predator Object Tracking Algorithm

#35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This is massively ground breaking. Sounds like you're used to bad algorithms. I think there is a serious disconnect between the state of the art in computer vision and what's used in industry. The demo was cool, but the techniques are not that revolutionary. From a cursory glance through the papers, it is basically AdaBoost (for detection) and Lucas-Kanade (for tracking), with a few extensions. Not to discount the g…

Spot on. There's a lot of current work going on that effectively splits computer vision into multiple parallel tasks for better results but uses previously well known techniques (PTAM is another good example). As an aside, I read through the paper and it doesn't look like this could track, say, your index finger separately from other fingers if, for a moment, your hand was occluded. This pretty much bars using this e…

I don't understand why everyone seems to have such a hardon for Minority Report-style systems. Gorilla arm pretty much rules that out from the start, and a tablet is more natural anyway.

A trackpad with a separate screen would be optimal (so you don't have to look at your hands).

Re: Predator Object Tracking Algorithm

#36
post #34

Ok so the fact that he has produced this himself, using off-the-shelf commodity laptops etc is really great. But this technology doesn't seem new to me - technology already exists for surveillance cameras in police and military helicopters to track an object like a car and keep it in vision as the helicopter turns and maneuvers. Likewise, facial recognition - both statically and within a video stream - isn't new eith…

[deleted]

Re: Predator Object Tracking Algorithm

#37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depending on how well the computational load can be reduced to hardware small systems could provide for head mounted tracking systems He's clearly developing it on his laptop with a shitty webcam. That's why this is amazing. Screw robotic manufacturing, this is for my phone.

Phone != Laptop. It says he's running on a "Intel Core 2 Duo CPU 2.4 GHz, 2 GB RAM" according to his website. As a good rule of thumb, computer vision runs about an order of magnitude slower (10x) on a phone (like an iPhone) than on a desktop/laptop. Also - a crappy webcam actually makes things computationally easier because there's less data to deal with. In a lot of computer vision algorithms the first step is to t…

Specialized processing hardware != general-use CPU. Face tracking and image stabilization in dirt-cheap cameras is a good example, as is hardware video decoders or graphics cards. If a market emerges, specialized hardware will be built, and it'll be embeddable in just about anything.

Re: Predator Object Tracking Algorithm

#38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spot on. There's a lot of current work going on that effectively splits computer vision into multiple parallel tasks for better results but uses previously well known techniques (PTAM is another good example). As an aside, I read through the paper and it doesn't look like this could track, say, your index finger separately from other fingers if, for a moment, your hand was occluded. This pretty much bars using this e…

I don't understand why everyone seems to have such a hardon for Minority Report-style systems. Gorilla arm pretty much rules that out from the start, and a tablet is more natural anyway. A trackpad with a separate screen would be optimal (so you don't have to look at your hands).

Gorilla arm would prevent people from using that kind of system to replace mouse and keyboard, but I don't see why it could not work for some applications. I can think of several use cases where I would like a UI that does not require me to touch the hardware (think cooking or watching videos in the bath tub).

Re: Predator Object Tracking Algorithm

#39
post #13

The face recognition part was too good for not picking up the face of other people. Or was it detecting just the most similar face? But facial recognition aside, the uses are endless. If it can be brought to the same level Kinect drivers are at, but with finger tracking and no custom hardware , this could change everything.

[deleted]

Re: Predator Object Tracking Algorithm

#40
post #3

Technical details here, with links to relevant papers at the bottom. http://info.ee.surrey.ac.uk/Personal/Z.Kalal/tld.html

Unfortunately you cannot download the source code, the link is disabled. And the GPL license he says he is using requires that the source code must be available for download without any restrictions like "send me an email" or "create an acount".

Edit: I sent him an email :)

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