DEVELOPING A REAL-TIME PERSON TRACKING SYSTEM USING THE TMS320C40 DSP

This application report describes the development of a real time system for tracking a walking person using a high-speed image processor and an active camera head. The image processor is composed of five digital signal processing (DSP) boards. Each DSP board includes two Texas Instruments (TI(TM)) TMS320C40 DSPs that communicate with each other through the communication ports and perform various image-processing in parallel.

The first three DSP boards calculate flows (the velocity field of an image) based on the gradient method. Next, the region of a person on the image is extracted from the optical flows using knowledge about the shape of a person. Finally, the camera head is controlled to keep the person in the field of view of the camera. The result is shown for tracking a person in a cluttered background.

This document was an entry in the 1995 DSP Solutions Challenge, an annual contest organized by TI to encourage students from around the world to find innovative ways to use DSPs. For more information on the TI DSP Solutions Challenge, see TI's World Wide Web site at www.ti.com.

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