Statistical Background Subtraction for a Mobile Observer

  • Authors:
  • Eric Hayman;Jan-Olof Eklundh

  • Affiliations:
  • -;-

  • Venue:
  • ICCV '03 Proceedings of the Ninth IEEE International Conference on Computer Vision - Volume 2
  • Year:
  • 2003

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Abstract

Statistical background modelling and subtraction has proved to be apopular and effective class of algorithms for segmentingindependently moving foreground objects outfrom a staticbackground, without requiring any a priori information of theproperties of foreground objects. This paper presents twocontributions on this topic, aimed towards robotics where an activehead is mounted on a mobile vehicle. In periods when the vehicle'swheels are not driven, camera translation is virtually zero, andbackground subtraction techniques are applicable. Parts of thiswork are also highly relevant to surveillance and videoconferencing. The first part of the paper presents an efficientprobabilistic framework for when the camera pans and tilts. Aunified approach is developed for handling various sources oferror, including motion blur, sub-pixel camera motion, mixed pixelsat object boundaries, and also uncertainty in backgroundstabilisation caused by noise, unmodelled radial distortion andsmall translations of the camera. The second contribution regards aBayesian approach to specifically incorporate uncertaintyconcerning whether the background has yet been uncovered by movingforeground objects. This is an important requirement duringinitialisation of a system. We cannot assume that a backgroundmodel is available in advance since that would involve storingmodels for each possible position, in every room, of the robot'soperating environment. Instead the background model must begenerated online, very possibly in the presence of moving objects.