Real-time Visual Tracker by Stream Processing

In this work, we implement a real-time visual tracker that targets the position and 3D pose of objects in video sequences, specifically faces. The use of stream processors for the computations and efficient Sparse-Template-based particle filtering allows us to achieve real-time processing even when tracking multiple objects simultaneously in high-resolution video frames. Stream processing is a relatively new computing paradigm that permits the expression and execution of data-parallel algorithms with great efficiency and minimum effort. Using a GPU (graphics processing unit, a consumer-grade stream processor) and the NVIDIA CUDA™ technology, we can achieve performance improvements as large as ten times compared to a similar CPU-only tracker. At the same time, the Stream processing approach opens the door to other computing devices, like the Cell/BE™ or other multicore CPUs.