Object tracking apparatus, object tracking method and recording medium

An object movement tracking method executed by an object movement tracking apparatus comprising:

• an observing device for observing a scene including a object and for acquiring inputted image data at a rate more than a predetermined rate;
• an image memory device for temporally storing sequentially inputted image data from said observing device;
• and
• a computer for processing said sequentially inputted image data so as to track the movement of said object;
• wherein:
• said computer includes memory for storing computer programs including:
• an object recognition module for selecting a frame among image data stored in said image memory device frame by frame and detecting position/posture of said object in the selected frame;
• and
• a movement tracking module for tracking the position/posture of said object in succeeding frames to the frame selected by said recognition module, wherein:
• said computer employs the tracking method based on the image data sequentially inputted from said observing device and temporally stored in said image memory device, the tracking method comprising the steps of:
• acquiring an initial position of said object to be tracked;
• detecting a movement of said object;
• tracking the movement of said object on real time basis based on the image data sequentially inputted and temporally stored in said image memory device;
• and
• recovering and resuming said tracking the movement of said object by operating said object recognition module and movement tracking module in parallel as they communicate with each other when tracking the movement of said object fails during said tracking step, wherein:
• said recovering and resuming step includes a substep to run said movement tracking module.

An object movement tracking apparatus comprising:

• an observing device for observing a scene including said object and for acquiring inputted image data at a rate more than a predetermined rate;
• an image memory device for temporally storing sequentially inputted image data from said observing device;
• and
• a computer for processing said sequentially inputted image data so as to track the movement of said object;
• wherein:
• said computer includes memory for storing computer programs including:
• an object recognition module for selecting a frame among image data stored in said image memory device frame by frame and detecting position/posture of said object in the selected frame;
• and
• a movement tracking module for tracking the position/posture of said object in succeeding frames to the frame selected by said recognition module, wherein:
• said image memory device includes a recording medium which stores the following information and programs:
• information on an initial position of said object to be tracked;
• an object movement tracking program for detecting and tracking on real time basis based on image data inputted from said observing device and stored in said image memory device;
• and
• a program for recovering and resuming tracking by operating said object recognition module and said movement tracking module in parallel while they communicate with each other when said tracking program fails in tracking the movement of said object during the tracking by said tracking program;
• wherein
• said recovering and resuming program has a subprogram to run said movement tracking module.