Dear ROS users,



I would like to introduce OpenPTrack,
 an open source project for real time people tracking in RGB-D camera 
networks targeted towards applications in education, art, and culture 
(e.g. the Whorl installation,
LASHP Welcome Center prototype, and 
this education research project.)






OpenPTrack is a joint effort of UCLA REMAP and
Open Perception. Key collaborators include the
University of Padova, Electroland and Indiana University Bloomington.




It consists of a collection of ROS packages whose main features are:

user-friendly network calibrationperson detection from RGB/infrared/depth imagesefficient multi-person trackingUDP and NDN streaming of tracking data in JSON format





It currently supports networks of Kinect v1, SwissRanger SR4500 and
stereo cameras custom-built with PointGrey cameras. Support for Kinect v2 will be added soon.






We have three  deployed multi-imager testbeds at the UCLA Lab School, UCLA Interpretive Media Laboratory, and University of Indiana, and will add a fourth this month. 





We are currently looking for developers interested in creating 
easy to use front-end interfaces for OpenPTrack, thus fully automating 
all of the steps of designing the camera network and setting up, 
configuring, calibrating, operating, and debugging
 the system.



* Required Skills: *

- Experience with C++.

- Experience with Robot Operating System (ROS).

 

* Nice To Have: *

- Experience developing web interfaces.

- Experience with ROS tools for developing web interfaces.
- Experience with OpenCV and PCL.

- Knowledge of people tracking algorithms.

- Knowledge of camera calibration algorithms.








In February, we are planning to launch a pilot 
crowdfunding campaign to help support getting OpenPTrack in the hands of
 more potential users, and would love to get these additional developers
 aboard by that time. 








For applications and any enquiries, please send an email to Jeff Burke (jburke@remap.ucla.edu) or Matteo Munaro (munaro@dei.unipd.it).









Best regards,

Matteo





References:

M. Munaro, A. Horn, R. Illum, J. Burke and R. B. Rusu. OpenPTrack: 
People Tracking for Heterogeneous Networks of Color-Depth Cameras. In 
IAS-13 Workshop Proceedings: 1st Intl. Workshop on 3D Robot Perception 
with Point Cloud Library, pp. 235-247, Padova, Italy,
 2014 (paper|presentation).



___________________________________________
Matteo MUNARO, Ph.D.
Intelligent and Autonomous Systems Lab (IAS-Lab)Department of Information Engineering (DEI)Faculty of Engineering, The University of PaduaVia Ognissanti 72, I-35131 Padova, Italy
email: munaro@dei.unipd.itphone: +390498277831___________________________________________