In this paper, we present a fast and efficient technique for the data association problem applied to visual tracking systems. Visual tracking process is formulated as a combinatorial hypotheses search with a heuristic evaluation function taking into account structural and specific information such as distance, shape, color, etc. We introduce a Tabu Search algorithm which performs a search on an indirect space. A novel problem formulation allows us to transform any solution into the real search space, which is needed for fitness calculation, in linear time. This new formulation and the use of auxiliary structures yields a fast transformation from a blob-to-track assignment space to the real shape and position of tracks space (while calculating fitness in an incremental fashion), which is key in order to produce efficient and fast results. Other previous approaches are based on statistical techniques or on evolutionary algorithms. These techniques are quite efficient and robust although they cannot converge as fast as our approach.This work was supported in part by Projects CICYT TIN2008-06742-C02-02/TSI, CICYT
TEC2008-06732-C02-02/TEC, CAM CONTEXTS (S2009/TIC-1485) and DPS2008-07029-C02-02.Publicad
