A Marker-free Head Tracker Using Vision-based Head Pose Estimation with Adaptive Kalman Filter

TL;DR

This paper introduces a low-cost, marker-free head tracking system for driving simulators using vision-based head pose estimation and an adaptive Kalman Filter to improve accuracy and stability without additional hardware.

Contribution

It presents a novel adaptive Kalman Filter that enhances head pose estimation accuracy and stability in a marker-less, RGB camera-based driver head tracking framework.

Findings

Effective head pose tracking without markers or extra hardware

Adaptive Kalman Filter improves stability and smoothness

Compatible with various head pose estimation models

Abstract

The immersion and the interaction are the important features of the driving simulator. To improve these characteristics, this paper proposes a low-cost and mark-less driver head tracking framework based on the head pose estimation model, which makes the view of the simulator can automatically align with the driver's head pose. The proposed method only uses the RGB camera without the other hardware or marker. To handle the error of the head pose estimation model, this paper proposes an adaptive Kalman Filter. By analyzing the error distribution of the estimation model and user experience, the proposed Kalman Filter includes the adaptive observation noise coefficient and loop closure module, which can adaptive moderate the smoothness of the curve and keep the curve stable near the initial position. The experiments show that the proposed method is feasible, and it can be used with different head pose estimation models.