Cardboard People: A Parameterized Model of Articulated Image Motion

We extend the work of Black and Yacoob on the tracking and recognition of human facial expressions using parameterized models of optical flow to deal with the articulatedmotion of human limbs. We define a "cardboard person model" in which a person's limbs are represented by a set of connected planar patches. The parameterized image motion of these patches is constrained to enforce articulated motionand is solved for directly using a robust estimation technique. The recovered motion parameters provide a rich and concise description of the activity that can be used for recognition. We propose a method for performing viewbased recognition of human activities from the optical flow parameters that extends previous methods to cope withthe cyclical nature of human motion. We illustrate the method with examples of tracking human legs over long image sequences.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 1996
• Where: FGR
• Authors: Shanon X. Ju, Michael J. Black, Yaser Yacoob
• Keywords: Biometrics, FGR 1996, Human, Human Facial Expressions, Optical Flow