Object tracking

kthnxbai

Hi all,

I'm gonna be starting a fairly big project soon on object tracking with a webcam.... basically the ps move controller integrated with some kind of open source game...

I've looked into it a lil so far, and was just wondering if anyone knows of any good books/websites on the subject?

I've found some stuff online, code and the like... but I'm looking more for tutorials and theory and stuff.

And if anyone knows of any os games that'd be easily integrated with a motion controller that'd be great too...

Thanks in advance for any help

Evil Phil

Dunno if it will help but read an article about gesture based computing on Science Daily recently, here's the link.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/05/100521213630.htm

p

What language are you going to be using, do you have something in mind?

Here's a good article on it, and you'll see a huge amount of it is about controlling the environment as much as possible.
http://www.flong.com/texts/essays/essay_cvad/

Also, depending on the technology you're using you should check out OpenCV a computer vision library. And there's also tools like Processing.org and OpenFrameworks that give you a good helping hand getting started with stuff like this.

kthnxbai

I'm not sure what language I want to use yet.... I kinda wanna get a better feel for the project before I decide...

I was looking into python and C/C++ mainly... I've nearly no experience with python though....

I'd also like to implement it in whatever language the game I'm integrating it with is written it, provided it's suitable enough for it...

I've got a lot of experience with java, but a lot of similar projects I've seen online are in C... is there any particular reason for this?

Trivarion

OpenCV form Willow Garage: Free BSD licensed computer vision library. Can't recommend it enough. Good reference library (C, C++ and python), and comes with demos. I was able to get object tracking up and running in a few hours. If anything it'll give you a feel for what's required.

p

C & C++ is faster than Java, which is probably which is why you see it more often. And a lot of hardcore computer science researchers use C. However, unless you're going to be doing serious algorithms yourself you probably won't need it. My advice is start in a high level language and work down to a lower level language if & when you need it.

Definitely check out OpenCV, Processing.org (which is java based)
Also, OpenFrameworks and LibCinder are good C++ libraries/toolkits which provide easy access to libraries like OpenCV.

Webmonkey

That's pretty cool stuff alright. Kalman/Particle filters - but they quite tough to get a hand of. Better off using library like OpenCV that does that for you already.

CreepingDeath

I found nice head tracking software here a while back.
You had to stick 3 infrared LEDS on to a baseball call, but the software was free. Might give you an idea of what is possible.

FreeTrack Link

Free Track wiki link