Real-time head tracking and 3D pose estimation from range data

In this paper a head tracking algorithm using 3D data is described. The system relies on a novel 3D sensor that generates a dense range image of the scene. By not relying on brightness information, the proposed system guarantees robustness under various illumination conditions, and content of the scene. The main novelty of the proposed algorithms, with respect to other head tracking techniques, is the capability for accurate tracking of the 6 degrees of freedom of the head by explicitly utilising 3D head-shoulder geometry. A Bayesian tracking framework is also proposed for continuous 3D head pose estimation. The proposed system has been tested in a real-time application scenario.