On a New Technique in Laser Spot Detection and Tracking using Optical Flow and Kalman Filtering

Abstract

(Received January 02 2018, accepted March 18 2018) Laser spot emitted by laser pointers were widely used in numerous fields such as pointing during presentations, \u00a0guiding \u00a0robots \u00a0in \u00a0human \u00a0machine \u00a0interaction \u00a0(HCI), \u00a0and \u00a0guiding \u00a0munitions \u00a0to \u00a0targets \u00a0in military, \u00a0etc. \u00a0Our \u00a0interest \u00a0is \u00a0to \u00a0develop \u00a0an \u00a0effective \u00a0method \u00a0for \u00a0laser \u00a0spot \u00a0detection \u00a0and \u00a0tracking \u00a0with exploiting fewer features. In this paper, we jointly combined pyramid Lucas\u2013Kanade (PLK) optical flow for detection \u00a0and \u00a0extended \u00a0Kalman \u00a0filter \u00a0for \u00a0accurately \u00a0tracking \u00a0laser \u00a0spot \u00a0in \u00a0low-resolution \u00a0and \u00a0varying background \u00a0video \u00a0frames. \u00a0Using \u00a0this \u00a0new \u00a0technique, \u00a0we \u00a0only \u00a0need \u00a0to \u00a0deploy \u00a0intensity \u00a0of \u00a0laser \u00a0spot \u00a0with displacement \u00a0of \u00a0laser \u00a0spot \u00a0and \u00a0get \u00a0a \u00a0very \u00a0good \u00a0result. \u00a0This \u00a0technique \u00a0could \u00a0be \u00a0embedded \u00a0into \u00a0multi-core processing devices with inexpensive cost for potential high benefits in the future. \u00a0