Behavioral Analysis and Individual Tracking Based on Kalman Filter: Application in an Urban Environment

In order to improve behavioral analysis systems in urban environments, this paper proposes, using data extracted from video surveillance cameras, a tracking method through two approaches. The first approach consists in comparing the position of people between two images of a video and to perform tracking by proximity. The second method using Kalman filters is based on the anticipation of the position of an individual in the upcoming image. The use of this method proves to be more efficient as it allows continuing a detection even when people cross each other or when they pass behind obstacles. The use of Kalman filters in this domain provides a new approach to obtain reliable tracking and information on speed and trajectory variations. The proposed method is innovative in the way the tracking is performed and the results are exploited. Experiments were conducted in a real situation and showed that the use of some elements of the first method could be reused to integrate a notion of distance in the method based on the Kalman filter and thus improve the latter both in tracking and in detecting of abnormal behavior. This article deals with the functioning of the two methods as well as the results obtained with the same scenarios. The experimentation concludes through concrete results that the Kalman filter method is more efficient than the proximity method alone. A sample result is available online for two of the seven videos used in this article (accessed on 19 July 2021).