Design and implementation of a multi-purpose real-time pan-tilt visual tracking system

A multi-purpose real-time visual tracking system that can be used in different scenarios has been designed and implemented in this study. This real-time visual tracking system can be operated in two modes - "static tracking" and "dynamic tracking". When operated in the static tracking mode, a modified adaptive background subtraction method is used to detect the moving object. In contrast, when operated in the dynamic tracking mode, a region-based matching approach is used to estimate the motion of the moving target and the servo control unit would be activated to control the camera motion so that the moving target's image is kept in the center of the monitoring screen. Several experiments such as "traffic monitoring", "marine creature detection", and "intruder detection/tracking" were conducted to evaluate the system's performance. Experimental results indicate that the performance of the developed real-time visual tracking system is satisfactory.