Moving object perception and tracking by use of DSP

The authors describe a system for real time optical flow extraction and tracking an object. The optical flow extraction is based on the generalized gradient model, and calculates the velocity of an image patch by measuring the spatial and temporal intensity gradients in the patch. The system is a linear array processor capable of processing directly TV images in real time. It consists of a video I/O board and DSP boards. Each DSP board includes two TMS320C40 DSP chips, and can be connected to tandem DSP boards to build up a linear array system. By adding a few DSP boards, the system can track a specified object in a complex background. Extraction of more reliable optical flows and the uncertainty of the flow is also described which is useful for segmentation of the flow field.