Realtime multiple object tracking based on optical flows

This paper describes real time object tracking by extracting optical flows from a sequence of images. Optical flows are calculated based on the generalized gradient model. Our method detects a moving object, and tracks it from the optical flow data. Assuming that pixels corresponding to the same object have similar flow vectors, we extract a connected region with similar flow vectors. We apply this method to multiple object tracking. When two objects overlap, foreground object is recognized, and each object is tracked without confusion. Optical flow extraction and object tracking are executed in realtime by a special image processor.