Real Time Embedded Cam Shift Object Tracking
Algorithm using Davenci TMS320DM6437 EVM
1
Khidir Elhadi Bala Ahmed, 2Rania A. Mokhtar, 2Rashid A. Saeed
1
Electronic Design and Research Department, Sudan Academy for Science, Khartoum Sudan
2
Sudan University of Science and Technology (SUST), Sudan
khidir_mph@hotmail.com
Abstract — Object tracking in real time is
one of the most important topics in the field of
computer Vision. The work undertaken in
this dissertation is mainly focused on
development of a reliable and robust real time
tracking system that can track the object of
interest in the video acquired from a
stationary or moving camera.
The proposed algorithm is a real time
algorithm that operates in 25 frames per
second depending on the input video
properties and probability distribution of the
intensity of the tracked object.
The Digital Video Development Platform
DM6437 EVM is used to obtain the real time
video sequence and process the frame to
extract the object using the CAMSHIFT
algorithm.
The information obtained from the frame is
extracted and mean shift algorithm is used to
search the object with in the frame. The
experimental results obtained from the
proposal prove the consistency and real time
performance of the proposed algorithm.
Index-CCS, CAMSHIFT, Histogram,
histogram projection, intensity, pixel, real
time, TM320DM6437, YUV, VPFE, VPBE,
VPSS.
I. INTRODUCTION
Tracking is defined as the estimation of the
trajectory of an object in an image plane
while it is moving around the scene. By
other means, a tracker assigns labels to the
tracked object consistently in different
frames of the video. In addition, with respect
to the tracking domains, a tracker also
provides information about the object, such
as orientation, area or shape of that object
[1].
Most of recently developed tracking
algorithms use the following principles:
correlation methods, optical flow,
background subtraction, particle filtering,
methods based on probability density
evaluation, etc. The correlation and optical
flow methods are distinguished with their
high computational complexity making them
hardly suitable for real-time applications [2].
The background subtraction has low
robustness in the presence of noise, and
cannot work when the observation camera is
moving.
Research has been carried out for many
years in this field. In this sequel, algorithms
have been developed and tested on desktop
machines [3].
Real-time object detection and tracking is a
critical task in many computer vision
applications such as surveillance, driver
assistance, gesture recognition and man
machine interface [4].
For machines efficient object tracking is a
difficult task. The computational complexity
of the algorithm is critical for most
applications. Several target tracking
techniques have been presented by many
researches in past. Most of the techniques
are dependent on limited field of view from
a stationary camera and requires lots of
human computer interaction [5].
The operational requirements on a video
tracking system are Target detection, target
auto track, data collection, and real-time data
reduction.
Moreover the primary performance factors
are; target characteristics, acquisition range,
tracking accuracy and data resolution.
The target characteristics which must be
considered in the tracking system are; size,
target radiance, background radiance,
dynamics and range.
An embedded system is a dedicated
computer-based system for an application(s)
or product. For our applied problem we used
a digital signal processor (DSP) oriented to
video image processing. Particularly, we
took the DSP, type TMS320DM6437, used
as a basis for the debugging means called
Spectrum Digital DM6437 EVM – in
accordance with the task to be solved.
The continuous development of modern Figure 1 video tracking procedures
industrial technology has put forward higher
requirements for the acquisition, processing The TMS320DM643x Digital Media
and transmission of image information. In Processor (DMP) contains a powerful DSP to
recent years, high-speed digital signal efficiently handle image, video, and audio
processing technology develops rapidly and processing tasks. The DM643x DMP
the strong signal processing ability of DSP consists of the following primary
and provides solid theoretical and components and sub-systems [7]:
application foundation for the real-time 1.DSP Subsystem (DSPSS), including
processing of image information. Embedded the C64x+ MEGAMODULE and
platform has features like smaller size, low- associated memory.
cost, low power consumption and low 2.Video Processing Subsystem (VPSS),
maintenance [6]. including the Video Processing Front
Therefore, developing an image processing End (VPFE) Subsystem, Image Input
system on the embedded platform can and Image Processing Subsystem,
improve these systems in case of reliability and the Video Processing Back End
and controllability. Comparing with the (VPBE) Display Subsystem.
traditional image processing system, this 3.A set of I/O peripherals.
system will have small size, low cost, good 4.A powerful Direct Memory Access
stability and real-time character. Figure (1) (DMA) subsystem and DDR2
shows the overall tracking procedures. memory controller interface.
 The CCD controller of the VPFE can capture
BT.656 formatted video or generic 16-bit or
8-bit YUV digital video data from a digital
video source such as an NTSC/PAL video
decoder [8]. Table 1 shows the DDR Storage
Format for YCbCr Processing.

Table1 DDR Storage Format for YCbCr

Processing.

SDRA Upper word Lower word

M
Addres
s
MSB(1 LSB( MSB(1 LSB(
5) 0) 5) 0)
N Y1 Cr0 Y0 Cb0
N+1 Y3 Cr2 Y2 Cb2
N+2 Y5 Cr4 Y4 Cb4

The VPBE block is comprised of the on-

screen display (OSD) and the video encoder
(VENC) modules. Together, these modules
provide a powerful and flexible back-end
display interface.
Figure 2. TMS320DM6437 video processing
• On-screen display (OSD) graphic
subsystem block diagram.
accelerator: The OSD manages display data
in various formats for several types of
The video processing subsystem
hardware display windows and it also
(VPSS) provides an input interface (VPFE)
handles blending of the display windows into
for external imaging peripherals such as
a single display frame, which the video
image sensors, video decoders, etc. and an
encoder (VENC) module then outputs.
output interface (video processing back end,
• Video encoder (VENC): The VENC takes
(VPBE)) for display devices, such as analog
the display frame from the on-screen display
SDTV displays, digital LCD panels, HDTV
(OSD) and formats it into the desired output
video encoders, etc. Figure (2) shows the
format and output signals (including data,
functional block diagram of the
clocks, sync, etc.) that are required to
TMS320DM6437 video processing
interface to display devices[9].
subsystem.
The VPFE supports image data acquisition
II. CAMSHIFT Algorithm
from sensor and digital video sources in
The CAMSHIFT algorithm was
various mode/formats. YUV sources have
developed for effective face-and-head
minimal image processing applied and can
tracking in perceptual user interfaces. Its
either be passed directly to external
main part represents a robust non-parametric
memory/DDR2 or passed to the resizer for
technique for climbing density gradients
scaling prior to writing to DDR2. Raw
permitting to find the peak of probability
imager data modes (non-YUV sources) are
density [10].
supported by the statistics collection modules
Some drawbacks of the mean shift algorithm
(H3A and histogram) as well as full preview
are that it fails to track multi-hued targets; it
engine image signal processing functions,
may fail to track the target when its shape
plus resizing after preview.
and orientation changes and it fails to track
the fast moving objects [1].
This is an easy process for continues
distributions which merely just hill climbing
applied to a density histogram of data. This
method is efficient compare to standard
template matching since it eliminates brute
force search [3].
Mean shift calculation steps:
1- Zeroth moment calculation:
𝑀00 =
∑𝑥 ∑𝑦 𝐼(𝑥, 𝑦) (1)
2- First moment calculation :
𝑀01 = ∑𝑥 ∑𝑦 𝑥 ∗
𝐼(𝑥, 𝑦) (2)
𝑀10 = ∑𝑥 ∑𝑦 𝑦 ∗
𝐼(𝑥, 𝑦) (3)
3- Mean search window calculation :
𝑥𝑐 =
𝑀01
(4)
𝑀00
𝑴 video processing front end (VPFE) and
𝒙𝒄 = 𝑴𝟎𝟏 (5)
𝟎𝟎
where I (x, y) is the intensity value of point
(x, y) in the Probability distribution of the
image.
The procedure of CAMSHIFT includes two
important parts which are the histogram and
the search of peak probability. The first step
of CAMSHIFT is to obtain the histogram of
tracked object. In the second step, the next
frame will be converted into a map of skin
color probability based on the histogram. In
the third step, the peak probability center
will be found based on zero moment and
first moment [3] [11].
Generally CAMSHIFT algorithm
calculates the target center position by using
the following procedure:
A. First of all Chose the initial region of
interest which contains the object we
want to track
B. Make a color histogram of that region
as the object model.
C. Let the probability distribution of
frame using the color histogram. As a
sign, in the implementation, they use
histogram back projection method.
D. Based on the probability distribution
of the image; find the center mass of
the search window using mean-shift
algorithm.
E. Add the Center of the search window
to the calculated object Centroid and
iterate step D until minimum distance.
F. Process the next frame with the search
window position from the step E.
III. Problem statement
Many researches have been done to
implement the above steps on and embedded
processors such as our target processor
TMS320DM4637, the results found after
code optimization about 125 milliseconds
per frame besides the failure of tracking
black objects and failure of tracking fast
moving objects as mentioned in [1]and [12].
IV. Proposed Solution
Starting from the video format and video
processing sub system (VPSS) block set of
the evaluation module TMS320DM6437, the
video processing back end (VPBE) captures
the video from the input camera and
displayed the video frames on required color
formats according to the settings[7]and[8].
The approach here uses the YUV format and
then in pixel manipulation we just use Y
component to calculate the back projection
histogram and probability distribution
function of the target.
The second point is thresholding the image
according to the object histogram and
unifying the object intensity, Then
calculating center of the object using
following equations:
1- Zeroth moment calculation:
𝑀00 =
∑𝑥 ∑𝑦 𝑡𝑎𝑟𝑔𝑒𝑡 𝑝𝑖𝑥𝑒𝑙𝑠 (6)
2- First moment calculation :
𝑀01 =
∑𝑥 𝑥 (7)
𝑀10 =
∑𝑦 𝑦 (8)
Where x and y are the vertical and horizontal
position of each target pixel.
3- Mean search window calculation :
Same as equation (5).
V. Methodology
The experimental setup as shown in Figure 3
and Figure 4 was installed and the C code
was written and compiled using Code
Composer Studio software which is
designed by Texas Instrument Company to
work with the evaluation module
TMS320DM6437.
Figure 3: experimental set up
Figure 4: system interaction block diagram
The PAL video input was selected by setting
the evaluation module TMS320DM6437 to
this format which is received from the day
light camera.
The width of the image is 720 pixels per line
and each pixel is tow components (YU) or
(YV), the Y component is one byte and the
U or V component is one byte; so in each
line we have 1440 bytes. The number of
horizontal lines (image height) is 480 lines
which were selected by the iteration
parameters.
In frame processing we used the Y
component which is quite enough for our
proposal to calculate the histogram of the
selected object to be tracked.
The target is selected by sending lock
command to the evaluation module through
UART from computer serial port by C#
software which is designed to send this
command. The vertical and horizontal
histogram projection was calculated to find
the target size.
The next step is to calculate the histogram of
the object and background to threshold the
image and unifying the intensity of the target
and background using Y component, then
the probability distribution of frame was
defined as a sign.
The proposed solution for decreasing the
amount of bytes to be calculated is
modification of equations (1),(2) and (3) to
equations (5),(6) and (7) respectively, and
the center of mass of the search window
using mean-shift algorithm was calculated
and found based on the color probability
distribution of the image. After that the
center of the search window was added to
the object’s Centroid and the image was
iterated again until minimum distance. The
next frame with the search window position
from the last step was processed.
VI. Results and Discussion
Test procedures are established according to
Table 2 parameters and quantities.
Table(2) Design Parameters
Parameter Quantity
Input Video format PAL
Frame processing time <40 ms
Target minimum size <50 pixels
Search window size 200×100
Target color Different colors
The C code was compiled and loaded
to the evaluation module and the target was
selected by lock command sent from PC
UART.
Tracking the selected target started
from the center of the field of view and the
target was tracked. This procedure was done
with different types of targets different sizes;
different color distributions and different
speeds according to the distances form the
camera and figures (5),(6),(7),(8) and (9)
were taken as the sample results of the test.
The images were captured from the
evaluation module output and each image
shows the target in the tracking window. On
the top left of each image the frame number
was written and the number on the left
Center of the image is the quantity of the
pixels which represent the target and on the
bottom left of the image the center of the
target position was written in horizontal and
vertical mod.
The time needed for frame processing code
measurements were performed with the aid
of CLK_gethtime() procedure available in
DSP/BIOS [13].
Also no any special camera settings had
been changed or any color conversions had
been done to aid the algorithm to search and
track the object.
As shown in Figure 5 the object number of Figure7 yellow and small size object
pixels is large it is about 19996 pixels and tracking
the object was tracked in all frames with
different moving speeds.

Figure 8 Non rigid object tracking.

Figure 5: large size object tracking

Figure 9 black object tracking

Also Figures (-6- ) and (-7-) are small size

Figure 6: small size object tracking
objects
In figure (-5-) the target was small with
different color distribution the objects have
been tracked in all video frames till the
release command.
Figures 8 and 9 proves that the tracking
algorithm is working good with this types of
target; the non –rigid objects can be tracked
easily and the black objects also can be
tracked with no any problem of dividing by
zero, because one of the previous researches
had been done on this approach and the
resulting algorithm fails on tracking black
objects. Besides on of the researches fails on
tracking fast moving objects.
The processing time of each frame was
measured and the resulting processing time
as shown in Figure 10 is about 39.5
milliseconds this proves that the algorithm is
applicable in real time applications.
Figure 10: Frame processing time per
millisecond
The target size also had been tested to check
the effect of number of calculations in the
processing time and also the results proves
that the time is quite enough to calculate
largest object sizes as shown in figure (-11-)
in all frames the processing time is about
39.5 milliseconds.
The advantage of selecting Y component
from the YUV format is decreasing the
number of manipulated bytes for each pixel
to 50% of the total bytes. Besides the
multiplication and summation processes
decreased by unifying the target intensities
and just counting the target pixels.
Figure11: Processing time for each frame
according to the object number of pixels.
If we compare the results shown in figures (-
10-) and (-11-) with the results[12] the
processing time is decreased from 125 ms
after optimization to 93.5 ms after
optimization. Also the algorithm can track
different color objects including black
objects.
VII. Conclusion
We can conclude that the designed system is
able to track easily various color objects,
even in the case of changing their size and
shape besides tacking fast objects. The
algorithm proves it success to search and
localize each target in real time on the
proposed embedded plat form.
This system with this algorithm is applicable
in surveillance system, clear background
target tracking and also can be improved to
work as automatic moving object detector
and tracker.
Still a lot of improvements are needed on
this approach to increase the performance
property and value of this algorithm
depending on the application needs.
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