Face feature tracking is an important element for detection and interpretation of human face expression and for further human mood-based interactions. This paper discusses the current status in face modeling techniques and performs a performance analysis. The analysis concerns the initialization and it also includes the lost track recovery for an Active Appearance Model-based face tracking algorithm.
I.INTRODUCTION Face tracking and, more precisely, face parameters tracking is based on matching a predefined model or template to an image of a real face. This approach has a wide area of applications ranging from base human expression detection to more advanced forms of human to machine interactions.Such a model-based approach can be used to match unlearned data on the basis of a correct set of parameters. The model-based approach can also generate good results being able to represent face characteristics using a smaller set of parameters, which is important in this area of intensive computing based recognition tasks.Since this approach is a good candidate to be deployed on a wide range of computing systems, this paper proposes a literature analysis on the current status in face modeling techniques. The general objective of integration in robotics applications is targeted. Therefore, the paper performs a performance analysis of these techniques from the initialization point of view. The lost track recovery is taken into consideration in the analysis. The analysis concerns a popular face tracking algorithm, namely the Active Appearance Model (AAM) search.The paper is structured as follows: the overview on face modeling and feature tracking techniques is conducted in the next section. Section III presents the performance analysis in the case of statistical models of appearance approach and in the case of AAM search algorithm. The conclusions are highlighted in Section IV.