Simultaneous Tracking of Multiple Objects for Augmented Reality Applications

Abstract

This paper presents an appearance-based image processing and tracking algorithm which is applied in a distributed Augmented Reality (AR) system. The tracker is computer vision based and is capable of simultaneous tracking of multiple objects. These objects are called place holder objects (PHOs), as they are used as interface elements and act as tangible interfaces for handling and interacting with virtual artifacts. The tracking system uses a fix mounted camera viewing at the workspace - a normal round table. All the PHOs are placed on the table and can be moved arbitrarily around, allowing both in-plane and out-of-plane rotations. In order to track and differentiate the PHOs in real-time, we apply an appearance-based object modeling. The utilization of appearance-based method for object recognition and tracking gives the system a distinct advantage in that it is computationally less expensive and it can be easily adapted to work with arbitrary PHOs by simply using an off-line training process.