Probabilistic people tracking with appearance models and occlusion classification: The AD-HOC system

0167-8655/$ see front matter 2010 Elsevier B.V. A doi:10.1016/j.patrec.2010.11.003 q Selected as best paper at Themis2008. ⇑ Corresponding author. Fax: +39 059 2056129. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (R. unimore.it (C. Grana), [email protected] (R. C AD-HOC (Appearance Driven Human tracking with Occlusion Classification) is a complete framework for multiple people tracking in video surveillance applications in presence of large occlusions. The appearance-based approach allows the estimation of the pixel-wise shape of each tracked person even during the occlusion. This peculiarity can be very useful for higher level processes, such as action recognition or event detection. A first step predicts the position of all the objects in the new frame while a MAP framework provides a solution for best placement. A second step associates each candidate foreground pixel to an object according to mutual object position and color similarity. A novel definition of non-visible regions accounts for the parts of the objects that are not detected in the current frame, classifying them as dynamic, scene or apparent occlusions. Results on surveillance videos are reported, using in-house produced videos and the PETS2006 test set. 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.