Lecture # 31: Motion Analysis

Muhammad Rzi Abbas Department of Mechatronics and Control Engineering

muhammadrziabbas@uet.edu.pk
Lecturer, Mechatronics Dept.
University of Engineering and Technology, Lahore
• In recent years, interest in motion processing has increased with
advances in motion analysis methodology and processing capabilities.
• Many new applications are motivated by widespread needs for
surveillance – such applications frequently focus on detection and
tracking of human faces, pedestrian or vehicular motion.
• Many other applications exist as well, including object-based video
compression, driver assistance, autonomous vehicles, robot
navigation, user interfaces etc.
• Another common motion analysis
problem is to obtain comprehensive
information about moving and static
objects present in a scene.
• Detecting 3D shape and relative depth
from motion are also fast-developing
fields
• The usual input to a motion analysis system is a temporal image
sequence
• A set of assumptions can help to solve motion analysis problems – as
always, prior knowledge helps to decrease the complexity of analysis
• Prior knowledge may include information about the camera motion –
mobile or static – and information about the time interval between
consecutive images
• This prior information about data helps in the choice of an
appropriate motion analysis technique
• There are three main groups of motion-related problems from a
practical point of view:
• Motion detection is the simplest problem. This registers any detected motion
and is often used for security purposes. This group usually uses a single static
camera
• Moving object detection and location represents another set of problems. A
camera is usually in a static location and objects are moving in the scene, or
the camera moves and objects are static. If only moving object detection is
required (note the difference between motion detection and moving object
detection), the solution can be based on motion-based segmentation
methods. Other more complex problems include the detection of a moving
object, the detection of the trajectory of its motion, and the prediction of its
future trajectory.
• There are three main groups of motion-related problems from the
practical point of view:
• Moving object detection and location represents another set of problems.
Practical examples of methods from this group include cloud tracking from a
sequence of satellite meteorological data, including cloud character and
motion prediction, motion analysis for autonomous road vehicles, automatic
satellite location by detecting specific points of interest on the Earth's surface,
city traffic analysis, and many military applications. The most complex
methods of this group work even if both camera and objects are moving.
• There are three main groups of motion-related problems from the
practical point of view:
• The third group is related to the derivation of 3D object properties from a set
of 2D projections acquired at different time instants of object motion.
• Even though motion analysis is often called dynamic image analysis, it is
sometimes based on a small number of consecutive images, maybe just
two or three in a sequence.
• This case is similar to an analysis of static images, and the motion is
actually analyzed at a higher level, looking for correspondence between
pairs of points of interest in sequential images.
• This is the main rationale for the extensive application of matching in
motion analysis.
• A 2D representation of a (generally) 3D motion is called a motion field, in
which each point is assigned a velocity vector corresponding to the motion
direction and magnitude.
• If motion analysis is based on detection of moving objects or object
feature points, the following object motion assumptions can help to
localize moving objects
• Maximum velocity: Assume that a moving object is scanned at time intervals
of dt. A possible position of a specific object point in an image is inside a circle
with its center at the object point position in the previous frame and its radius
v.dt, where v is the assumed maximum velocity of the moving object.
• Small acceleration: The change of velocity in time dt is bounded by some
constant.
• If motion analysis is based on detection of moving objects or object
feature points, the following object motion assumptions can help to
localize moving objects
• Common motion (similarity in motion): All the object points move in a
similar way.
• Mutual correspondence: Rigid objects exhibit stable pattern points. Each
point of an object corresponds to exactly one point in the next image in
sequence and vice versa, although there are exceptions due to occlusion and
object rotation.
• To generalize, image motion analysis and especially object tracking
combine two separate but inter-related components:
• Localization and representation of the object of interest (target), a mainly
bottom-up process that needs to overcome inherent changes in the
appearance, orientation, illumination, and scale of the target;
• Trajectory filtering and data association, a top-down process that considers
object dynamics and uses various sources of a-priori information, as well as
generation and evaluation of motion hypotheses, frequently using motion
models.
• Needless to say, stress may be on one or the other component based
on the nature of the motion application.
• For example, tracking aircraft on radar or video images would depend
heavily on the motion models associated with the individual aircraft
types.
• In contrast, tracking human faces in a crowded scene where abrupt
and unpredictable motion is more likely tracking will probably depend
more on target representation than on motion models.
• Equally important is to distinguish between single and multiple target
tracking and design methods accordingly.
• Image Processing, Analysis and Machine Vision by Milan Sonka,
Vaclav Hlavac and Roger Boyle, 3rd Edition, 2008.
• Chapter 16 (Section: Introduction)