Luminance Change Independent 3D Snail Tracking

Slow movement of snail can be a benefit since it means less speed of tracking is required to get accurate movement track, but in the other side it is difficult to extract the object because the snail is almost as static as the background. In this paper, we present a technique to track the snail by using one of its common characteristic, dark color of its shell. The technique needs to be robust to illumination change since the experiment is usually to observe the movement of snail both at bright and dim condition. Snail position coordinate in 3D space is calculated using orthogonal stereo vision which combines the information from two images taken from cameras at the top and in front of the aquarium. Experimental results show this technique does not need prior background image extraction and robust to gradual or sudden illumination change.