Patent ID: 8457355

Claim:
A method for representing objects tracked within 2D video data by 3D models, the method comprising: detecting and tracking movement of an object within a field of view environment of a 2D data feed of a calibrated video camera, wherein the camera is calibrated to place the camera within a spatial height, orientation and position context of a 3D model of the environment of the camera field of view; localizing a centroid of the tracked object; determining an intersection of the centroid with a ground-plane within the field of view environment; initializing a 3D mesh-based volumetric model appropriate for the tracked object within the spatial context of the 3D model of the environment by using a back-projection of a corresponding 2D image of the tracked object as a function of the centroid and determined ground-plane intersection; representing nonlinear dynamics of a tracked motion path of the object in the 2D image data as a collection of different local linear models; projecting a texture of the 2D object onto the 3D model; and upgrading 2D tracks of the object to 3D motion to drive the 3D model in dynamic mesh-based 3D by learning a weighted combination of the different local linear models that minimizes an image re-projection error of model movement.