Researcher wins award to develop visual tracking software

A University of California-Merced (Merced, CA) engineering professor has been named a recipient of the National Science Foundation's Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award to further his work on improving visual tracking abilities in machines.

The award will provide Professor Ming-Hsuan Yang with research funding of $473,797 over five years. Yang's research will focus on developing computer algorithms that can efficiently and effectively empower machines with object tracking, detection, and recognition capabilities similar to human cognition.

Visual tracking remains one of the most important and challenging problems in computer vision. Yang's algorithms would help machines handle scenarios in which the objects they are designed to track can drift, disappear and reappear, or are obscured by other objects.

Yang said his research could have broad applications, including assistive technology for the visually impaired, medical purposes like cell tracking and telesurgery, as well as tracking insect and animal motion and improved navigation and surveillance capabilities in robots.

In addition to the research, Yang's will be developing a library of tracking algorithms and a large benchmark data set, all of which would be made available to the public.

-- By Dave Wilson, Senior Editor, Vision Systems Design