Coupled Visual and Kinematic Manifold Models for Tracking

Abstract

In this paper, we consider modeling data lying on multiple continuous manifolds. In particular, we model the shape manifold of a person performing a motion observed from different viewpoints along a view circle at a fixed camera height. We introduce a model that ties together the body configuration (kinematics) manifold and visual (observations) manifold in a way that facilitates tracking the 3D configuration with continuous relative view variability. The model exploits the low-dimensionality nature of both the body configuration manifold and the view manifold, where each of them are represented separately. The resulting representation is used for tracking complex motions within a Bayesian framework, in which the model provides a low-dimensional state representation as well as a constrained dynamic model for both body configuration and view variations. Experimental results estimating the 3D body posture from a single camera are presented for the HUMANEVA dataset and other complex motion video sequences.