MCMC Particle Filter for Real-Time Visual Tracking of Vehicles

This paper adresses real-time automatic tracking and labeling of a variable number of vehicles, using one or more still cameras. The multi-vehicle configuration is tracked through a Markov Chain Monte-Carlo Particle Filter (MCMC PF) method. We show that integrating a simple vehicle kinematic model within this tracker allows to estimate the trajectories of a set of vehicles, with a moderate number of particles, allowing frame-rate computation. This paper also adresses vehicle tracking involving occlusions, deep scale and appearance changes: we propose a global observation function allowing to fairly track far vehicles as well as close vehicles. Experiment results are shown and discussed on multiple vehicle tracking sequences. Though now only tracking light vehicles, the ultimate goal of this research is to track and classify all classes of road users, also including trucks, cycles and pedestrians, in order to analyze road users interactions.