Target Locking and Tracking System for

Tanks Cannon
Ali Nisar1, Fawad Rubbani2, Wahab Yousaf3
#
BS-Electronic Engineering, Mohammad Ali Jinnah University, Islamabad
Pakistan
1
alinisar01@hotmail.com
2
rabbanif@hotmail.com
3
wahabyousaf1@gmail.com

Abstract An autonomous system has been designed for military pointing at the target, irrespective of tanks motion, so that it
and defense applications, in accordance with the state of the art always do hit the target whenever it is fired.
technology where Control Systems and Machine Vision have
been encapsulated. This autonomic system provides the In order to achieve this goal an autonomic system is designed
feasibility for cannon operator to be capable enough that he can and implemented, equipped with three major parts as Sensor,
observe the outside view, directed by cannon, by means of a Control system and Actuators. Sensing device is Camera,
Graphical Interface provided on the screen. By using this system which gives the input for Image Processing and template
the cannon operator will be able to operate the cannon manually extraction of locked target. Processed images are passed to
to locate the target and then lock it. Once the target is locked Tracking Algorithm (Kernel Based Object Tracking) and
then the cannon will be automatically tracking and continuously
pointing at it, unless the target is fired or released. During the
generates error signal, by calculating mean shift. Actuators are
manual control of cannon, pan-tilt moving the cannon will be high power motors, which are mounted with pan-tilt and
directly fed through joystick. But when a target is locked, then responsible for movement of camera and tanks cannon.
cannon is switched to automatic mode, and it will be controlled
by an embedded control system operating at an algorithm and
tracks the target locked to it. II. ENGINEERING METHODOLOGY
A MATLAB implementation of a kernel-based object-tracking
A. Control System Block Diagram
algorithm using the mean shift calculation over a discrete feature
space derived exclusively from color information is described.
We demonstrate adequate performance over a range of natural
sequences including rigid and non-rigid targets across
experimental conditions containing target collision, camera
motion, lighting variation, and target scale change. We perform
error analysis in terms of optimal target marking and event
specific error occurrence. A robust and efficient tracking
approach using structural features along with histogram based
Bhattacharya coefficient similarity measure is proposed for
Fig.1 Control System Block diagram
tracking non rigid objects. Tracking is performed by applying
kernel density estimation and similarity measurement between
two statistical distribution using Bhattacharya coefficients. B. Main Components Of Control System
Keywords Kernel Based Object Tracking, Mean Shift, For implementation of this project a control system is
Bhattacharya coefficient, Kernel Density Estimation, Graphical designed, which is equipped with three major parts as:
Interface.
Sensor: Sensing device is Camera, which provides outside
I. INTRODUCTION view to cannon operator at GUI, as well as the input for Image
Processing and template extraction of locked target.
Implementing a Video Processing based control system to
lock and track a target for a battle tanks cannon. Previously, Control System: Processed images are passed to Tracking
the war tanks used in the battle fields were of the nature that Algorithm (Kernel Based Object Tracking) and generates error
they had to be in the static position in order to fire cannon at signal, by calculating mean shift.
the target, so that tanks systems do not get affected by its
recoil. But now-a-days modern tanks are capable of firing the Actuator: Actuators are AC motors, which are mounted with
cannon while even in a high speed motion. Now with such pan-tilt and are responsible for movement of camera and
advancement it was required that tanks cannon should be tanks cannon.

Intersoft International, Islamabad Pakistan.

 III. MODES OF THE CONTROL SYSTEM
The two main modes of control system are tag along rationale: Where K is some kernel and h is a smoothing parameter called
The view observed by the cannon operator on the screen is due the bandwidth.
to camera mounted on the cannon. During the manual control B. Kernel
of cannon, servo motors which are moving cannon will be
A kernel is a weighting function used in non-parametric
directly fed through directional buttons or joystick available
density estimation techniques. Kernels are used in kernel
on the graphical interface screen. But when a target is locked,
density estimation to estimate random variables density
then cannon is switched to automatic mode, and it will be
functions, or in kernel regression to estimate the conditional
controlled by an embedded control system operating at an
expectation of a random variable. A kernel is a non-negative
algorithm and tracks the target locked to it. real-valued integral function K satisfying the following two
IV. TRACKING ALGORITHM requirements
In the field of computer vision, object tracking is an important
task. Tracking a complex object in routine life environment by
a human being is not a difficult task, but the same task being (2)
carried out automatically by the computers, this simple task
becomes a challenging one. To overcome this challenge, high
performance computers loaded with complex mathematical
(3)
methods are employed. But even passing through all these
activities the automated tracking results are far behind of those
achieved by natural human being's capabilities. This is
because the natural system of tracking and processing the VI. TARGET MODEL REPRESENTATION
information in human beings is much more advanced than the To represent the target, first a feature space is to be chosen
existing new technologies. which can be texture, color or both. The target model is
represented in its feature space by its Probability Density
V. KERNAL BASED OBJECT TRACKING Function calculated using kernel density estimation given by
Kernel based object tracking algorithm tends to maximize the [2].
correlation between two statistical distributions [1]. The
correlation or similarity between two distributions is expressed
as a measurement derived from the Bhattacharya coefficient.
Kernel Based Object Tracking algorithm tine two major tasks (4)
for target tracking that is target representation and target
localization. The basic building block for application of
Kernel Based Object Tracking algorithm is kernel density where h is the bandwidth of the kernel and x is the center of
estimation. the d dimensional kernel while n is total number of points in
the kernel. Kernel density estimation can be estimated with the
A. Kernel Density Estimation applications of various kernels, which includes the uniform
In probability and statistics, density estimation is the kernel, Gaussian kernel, triangular kernel, bi-weight kernel,
construction of an estimate, based on observed data, of an Epanechnikov kernel etc. For kernel density estimation in
unobservable underlying probability density function. The Kernel Based Object Tracking multivariate Epanechnikov
unobservable density function is thought of as the density kernel is proposed to be a better choice. The gradient of kernel
according to which a large population is distributed; the data density estimation results is in the mean-shift vector. As the
are usually thought of as a random sample from that Epanechnikov kernel is differentiating, the use of differentiate
population. A variety of approaches to density estimation are kernel enables to define the estimate of the density gradient as
used, including Parzen windows and a range of data clustering the gradient of kernel density estimate.
techniques, including vector quantization.
A histogram can be thought of as a collection of point samples
from a kernel density estimate for which the kernel is a
uniform box the width of the histogram bin.
If x1, x2, ..., XN ~ f is an independent and identically-distributed
sample of a random variable, then the kernel density Fig.2 Epanechnikov kernel 3D plot and PDF plot
approximation of its probability density function is The PDF of the feature u =1.m, in target model is
calculated by
(1) (5)
where [b(xi) -u] is Kroneckor delta function while m is the
number of bins used for the calculation of PDF for target
representation which is centered at 0. b(Xi) is image feature
value at spatial location x, and h is bandwidth of the kernel
used. C is the normalization constant whose value can be
calculated by imposing the condition that sum of all
probabilities in a sample space equals to unity i.e.
(6)
Similarly the target candidate PDF centered at location y is
calculated using the following equation.
(7)
VII. GAUSSIAN PYRAMIDS AND MODEL
Kernel Based Object Tracking algorithm is considered as an
efficient and robust approach for tracking however it has its
own limitations. Kernel Based Object Tracking requires the
satisfaction of following assumptions for tracking the target
successfully:
Targets must have small motion with respect to their
size (Mean-Shift vector requirement)
Target features must be nearly consistent throughout
the tracking sequence.
Size of kernel should be at least comparable to the
target features, failing which, the efficiency of the
tracker is reduced especially in the case where the
size of target differs due to motion of target towards
or away from the camera.
In some real-world tracking problems, the above-mentioned
assumptions may not be fulfilled, resulting in serious
shortcomings. A robust technique must cater for large motion
and varying features of the target. In recent studies an
improved kernel based tracking algorithm using Gaussian
pyramid and model updates [4] is proposed that performs well
for large object motions and changes in object features. The
problem of larger motion is addressed with the use of
Gaussian pyramids for application of mean shift vector and the
target model updates are used to cater the problem of varying
features and changes in target size
A. Application Of Pyramids
A Gaussian Pyramid is a technique used in image processing,
especially in texture synthesis. The technique involves
creating a series of images which are weighted down using a
Gaussian average (Gaussian Blur) and scaled down [3]. Since
the Fourier transform of a Gaussian is another Gaussian;
applying a Gaussian blur has the effect of reducing the image's
high-frequency components; a Gaussian blur is thus a low pass
filter. When this technique is used multiple times, it creates a
stack of successively smaller images, with each pixel
containing a local average that corresponds to a pixel
neighborhood on a lower level of the pyramid.
Fig.3 Object motion vector less then tracking window width
Pyramids are still frequently used for expressing
computationally efficient approximations to scale-space
representation. The ball has motion vector less than its
tracking window width and maximum part of ball is in
tracking window. On the other hand, when motion vector
become greater than track window size, the ball move ahead
of tracking window and object being tracked is no more in
tracking window.
VIII. TRACKING USING BHATTACHARYA COEFFICIENT
Object Tracking requires a different approach when the
objects are described using the same model. Instantiating
several independent trackers for each object is not a
satisfactory solution because the independent trackers tend to
join together onto a single object. The main constraint of
tracking multiple targets is its computational cost. Kernel
based tracking using Bhattacharya similarity measures is an
efficient tracking technique for non-rigid object tracking
through the sequence of images for single target but it can't be
used for multi target tracking due to high computational
requirements. Other methods are also used for this purpose in
which probabilistic tracking approaches are common. The
major difficulty of using these probabilistic tracking
approaches like Kalman and Particle filtering is their high
computational cost and requirement of prior knowledge about
the scene. Both of these phenomena make the use of
probabilistic approaches limited in real time applications. In
this thesis we presented a robust and efficient tracking
approach for multiple targets using Kernel Based Object
Tracking technique.
Our tracking approach is based on calculating the
Bhattacharya coefficient of first target image with all other
target images and then scan whole image for calculating
Bhattacharya coefficient for first image. This Bhattacharya
coefficient search provides estimated regions for searching all
objects. Now mean shift algorithm will be applied for precise
locating and tracking of individual objects. This leads to
a very computationally efficient and robust
nonparametric multiple target tracking algorithm. It is
expected that the new method is easily able to track the
multiple moving targets and it is very much computationally
efficient as compared to original mean shift tracking technique
for multiple targets. The implementation and testing of
proposed algorithm is set as future work.
IX. RESULTS
Fig.4 Comparison of Pyramidal KBOT and Centroid Adjusted KBOT
X. MEAN SHIFT VECTOR CODING AND TRANSMISSION
Mean-shift vector is calculated on the basis of image
processing Kernel Based Object Tracking algorithm; as a
result a mean-shift is calculated and stored in the form of a
1x2 matrix.
Error = [(X Y)]
X is for azimuth deviation
Y is for elevation deviation
Positive values of X or Y indicate the error vector in right
or up respectively and vice versa.
In order to pass this error vector to controlling hardwares
microcontroller in a single go, Error matrix is coded to four
byte value.
1/0 0-9 0-9 0-9
Direction Magnitude
The header byte represents the direction of vector, i.e. positive
or negative. The following three bytes represents the
magnitude of the error vector. Coded data bytes are
transmitted to controller via serial port, at a baud rate of 9600
bps.
XI. CONCLUSION
In this project we have implemented a control system with the
application of image processing named as Target Locking
and Tracking System for Tanks Cannon using Kernel Based
Object Tracking algorithm in grey scale RGB (Red Green
Blue) and Hue base image features. During these diverse
features implementation, different interesting results were
obtained, which provide base for further research in this area.
For enhancing the capability of Kernel Based Object Tracking
for tracking vehicles in the battle field different solutions were
studied and Gaussian pyramidal approach is selected for
working as a remedy. The stated approach is considered and
implemented on different tracking environments.
Target localization is major part of tracking and requires
proper attention for achieving robust tracking results. A new
approach using centroid estimated crosshair adjustment for
convex shaped rigid and non rigid targets is proposed which
provide improved localized tracking. The new technique is
tested on different videos and proved to be efficient and robust
tracking approach.
In this project we proposed a computationally efficient
normalized correlation based tracking approach using adaptive
window technique.
The application of adaptive window made correlation search
or match area less as compare to original correlation based
tracking approach.
In the continuation of research in vision based tracking a new
approach for multiple target tracking using Bhattacharya
coefficient is proposed. This is a computationally efficient and
robust approach for tracking of target efficiently.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
All thanks to ALMIGHTY ALLAH, the most Gracious and the
Beneficent, who always loves and cares us the most. We
express our sincere gratitude to our supervisor Dr. Aamer
Iqbal Bhatti who helped and guided us in completing this
project.
We also pay our thanks to Dr. Imtiaz Ahmed Taj and our co-
supervisor Mr. Qadeer Ahmed who gave us the most needed
supervision and took keen interest in all the matters related to
our project. We also thank them for instilling a sense of
curiosity to learn new things in us.
We also thank our parents for their timely help, support and
encouragement throughout our lives. We would like to thank
all our teachers for their guidance and all our colleagues for
providing us good company.
REFERENCES
[1]. Rashid Mehmood, Modified Kernel Based
Object Tracking MS-Thesis Mohammad Ali
Jinnah University, Islamabad, Pakistan.
[2]. Dorin comanciu ,Visvanatan Ramesh and Peter
meer, Kernel based object Tarcking IEEE
Trans. Analysis and Machine Intelligence, 2003,
col.25, no. 5 , pp.564-575.
[3]. G.R.Bradski Computer Vision Face Tracking for
use in perceptual User Interface.
[4]. Mubarik Shah Fundamental of Computer Vision.
[5]. K.Fukanaga and L.D. Hostetler, the estimation
of the Gradient of the density Function with
Application in pattern recognition IEEE Trans.
Information Theory,Vol. 21 1975, Tp.32-40.
[6]. Dong Xu yimin Wang and Jinwen An Image
and vision computing new Spatial Color
Histogram in Mean-Shift based Tracking
Algorithm.
[7]. M.Sohail Khalid, MUmar Ilays M. Asim Ajaz
M.Saquib Sarfaraz Bhattacharyya coefficient in
correlation of grayscale objects.