Inexpensive Colour Tracking to Overcome Performer ID Loss

Robert Pritchard, and Ian Lavery

Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression

Abstract:

The NuiTrack IDE supports writing code for an active infrared camera to track up to six bodies, with up to 25 target points on each person. The system automatically assigns IDs to performers/users as they enter the tracking area, but when occlusion of a performer occurs, or when a user exits and then re-enters the tracking area, upon rediscovery of the user the system generates a new tracking ID. Because of this any assigned and registered target tracking points for specific users are lost, as are the linked abilities of that performer to control media based on their movements. We describe a single camera system for overcoming this problem by assigning IDs based on the colours worn by the performers, and then using the colour tracking for updating and confirming identification when the performer reappears after occlusion or upon re-entry. A video link is supplied showing the system used for an interactive dance work with four dancers controlling individual audio tracks.

Citation:

Robert Pritchard, and Ian Lavery. 2020. Inexpensive Colour Tracking to Overcome Performer ID Loss . Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.4813245

BibTeX Entry:

  @inproceedings{NIME20_17,
 abstract = {The NuiTrack IDE supports writing code for an active infrared camera to track up to six bodies, with up to 25 target points on each person. The system automatically assigns IDs to performers/users as they enter the tracking area, but when occlusion of a performer occurs, or when a user exits and then re-enters the tracking area, upon rediscovery of the user the system generates a new tracking ID. Because of this any assigned and registered target tracking points for specific users are lost, as are the linked abilities of that performer to control media based on their movements. We describe a single camera system for overcoming this problem by assigning IDs based on the colours worn by the performers, and then using the colour tracking for updating and confirming identification when the performer reappears after occlusion or upon re-entry. A video link is supplied showing the system used for an interactive dance work with four dancers controlling individual audio tracks. },
 address = {Birmingham, UK},
 author = {Pritchard, Robert and Lavery, Ian},
 booktitle = {Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression},
 doi = {10.5281/zenodo.4813245},
 editor = {Romain Michon and Franziska Schroeder},
 issn = {2220-4806},
 month = {July},
 pages = {89--92},
 publisher = {Birmingham City University},
 title = {Inexpensive Colour Tracking to Overcome Performer ID Loss },
 url = {https://www.nime.org/proceedings/2020/nime2020_paper17.pdf},
 year = {2020}
}