Patent ID: 7173650

Claim:
A method for reacquiring a target in an automated video tracking system, the method comprising the steps of: (a) selecting a desired target to be tracked; (b) constructing a computer model of the selected target; (c) switching the automated video tracking system to an automatic track mode to initiate a tracking sequence to automatically track the selected desired target based on correlation between a video image of the selected, tracked target and the previously constructed computer model; (d) during said automatic track mode, the automated video tracking system calculating a confidence value indicating a degree of correlation between the tracked video image of the target and the previously constructed computer model of said tracked target; (e) during said automatic track mode, the automated video tracking system providing a warning to a user indicating that said automatic track mode is about to fail whenever said calculated confidence value falls below a pre-determined threshold confidence value; (f) if the automated video tracking system encounters a period of difficulty in tracking the tracked selected desired target, manually guiding tracking the selected target until the selected target is reacquired and said period of difficulty has passed; and (g) switching the automated video tracking system to the automatic mode for automatic tracking of the reaquired selected desired target based on the previously constructed computer model without constructing a new computer model.