Method and system for partial occlusion handling in vehicle tracking using deformable parts model

Abstract

Provided is a method and system of tracking partially occluded objects using an elastic deformation model. According to an exemplary method and system, partially occluded vehicles are detected and tracked in a scene including side-by-side drive-thru lanes. A method for updating an event sequence includes acquiring video data of a queue area from at least one image source; searching the frames for subjects located at least near a region of interest (ROI) of defined start points in the video data; tracking a movement of each detected subject through the queue area over a subsequent series of frames; using the tracking, determining if a location of the a tracked subject reaches a predefined merge point where multiple queues in the queue area converge into a single queue lane; in response to the tracked subject reaching the predefined merge point, computing an observed sequence of where the tracked subject places among other subjects approaching an end-event point; and, updating a sequence of end-events to match the observed sequence of subjects in the single queue lane.