Robust and real-time moving object tracking is a tricky job in computer vision systems. The development of an efficient yet robust object tracker faces several obstacles, namely: dynamic appearance of deformable or articulated targets, dynamic backgrounds, variation in image intensity, and camera (ego) motion. In this paper, a novel tracking algorithm based on particle swarm optimization (PSO) method is proposed. PSO is a population-based stochastic optimization algorithm modeled after the simulation of the social behavior of bird flocks and animal hordes. In this algorithm, a multi-feature model is proposed for object detection to enhance the tracking accuracy and efficiency. The object's model is based on the gray level intensity. This model combines the effects of different object cases including zooming, scaling, rotating, etc. into a single cost function. The proposed algorithm is independent of object type and shape and can be used for many object tracking applications. Over 30 video sequences and having over 20,000 frames are used to test the developed PSO-based object tracking algorithm and compare it to classical object tracking algorithms as well as previously published PSO-based tracking algorithms. Our results demonstrate the efficiency and robustness of our developed algorithm relative to all other tested algorithms. 
Efficient multi-feature PSO for fast gray level object-tracking