Computer vision methods applied to person tracking and identification

2013 - 2014Computer vision methods for tracking and identification of people in constrained and unconstrained environments have been widely explored in the last decades. De- spite of the active research on these topics, they are still open problems for which standards and/or common guidelines have not been defined yet. Application fields of computer vision-based tracking systems are almost infinite. Nowadays, the Aug- mented Reality is a very active field of the research that can benefit from vision-based user’s tracking to work. Being defined as the fusion of real with virtual worlds, the success of an augmented reality application is completely dependant on the efficiency of the exploited tracking method. This work of thesis covers the issues related to tracking systems in augmented reality applications proposing a comprehensive and adaptable framework for marker-based tracking and a deep formal analysis. The provided analysis makes possible to objectively assess and quantify the advantages of using augmented reality principles in heterogeneous operative contexts. Two case studies have been considered, that are the support to maintenance in an industrial environment and to electrocardiography in a typical telemedicine scenario. Advan- tages and drawback are provided as well as future directions of the proposed study. The second topic covered in this thesis relates to the vision-based tracking solution for unconstrained outdoor environments. In video surveillance domain, a tracker is asked to handle variations in illumination, cope with appearance changes of the tracked objects and, possibly, predict motion to better anticipate future positions. ... [edited by Author]XIII n.s

Mixed reality environment for mission critical systems servicing and repair

Mixed Reality (MR) technologies may play an important role in assisting on-site operators during maintenance and repair activities. Nevertheless, industrial equipment augmentation requires a high level of precision when co-registering virtual objects to the corresponding real counterparts. In this paper we describe a comprehensive proposal for a mixed reality environment aimed to improve the effectiveness of servicing and repair procedures in mission critical systems, while reducing the time required for the intervention. The tracking of the user's point of view exploits a multi-marker based solution for robust and precise augmentation of the operating field. The architecture also features a diminishing visualization strategy allowing the user to see only the fraction of real equipment that is relevant for the maintenance task. A finger color-based tracking provides powerful interaction capabilities by means of a not-instrumented interface exploiting colored fingertips caps. An evaluation study of the proposed MR environment, performed by technicians with no previous experience of MR systems, highlights the potential of the approach. © 2013 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg