[Studies in Computational Intelligence 481] Artur Babiarz, Robert Bieda, Karol Jędrasiak, Aleksander Nawrat (auth.), Aleksander Nawrat, Zygmunt Kuś (eds.) - Vision Based Systemsfor UAV Applications (2013, Sprin

Object Tracking in a Picture during Rapid
Camera Movements
Zygmunt Kuś and Aleksander Nawrat
Abstract. Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) are very useful platforms for detecting
and tracking objects which are located on the ground. The crux of the considered
problem is the tracked object which disappears from a field of view. The
above mentioned may be caused by rapid camera movements. One of the examples
of such a situation is the camera being attached to helicopter. In case of sudden
gust of wind a helicopter trajectory can be considerably and rapidly changed.
This results in losing tracked object from the picture we get from the camera. The
fundamental idea of the solution, which was presented here in, was based on additional
data concerning camera orientation and location. Moreover the distance of
a tracked object from the camera is also utilized to correct camera movements.
1 Introduction
Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) are very useful platforms for detecting and
tracking objects which are located on the ground. There are many solutions of an
object tracking problem which are based on image processing methods
[1,2,3,4,5,6,7]. UAV behavior depends on the weather and type [32]. One of the
problems may be rapid changes of wind and gusts. The following paper describes
the problem of a tracked object which disappears from a field of view. There are
three reasons which may cause this problem. Firstly, the object moves faster than
the tracking camera head. Secondly, a pattern recognition algorithm has a fault
and as a result it does not recognize the object. Finally, external distortion changes
the position of the camera in the way that the object is out of the range of the field
Zygmunt Kuś ⋅ Aleksander Nawrat
Silesian University of Technology, Institute of Automatic Control,
Akademicka 16, 44-101 Gliwice, Poland
e-mail: {zygmunt.kus,aleksander.nawrat}@polsl.pl
Aleksander Nawrat
Ośrodek Badawczo-Rozwojowy Urządzeń Mechanicznych “OBRUM” sp. z o.o.,
ul. Toszecka 102, 44-117 Gliwice, Poland
e-mail: anawrat@obrum.gliwice.pl
A. Nawrat and Z. Kuś (Eds.): Vision Based Systems for UAV Applications, SCI 481, pp. 77–91.
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-00369-6_5 © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2013