Study on a real-time infrared marker tracking method based on DSP

A real-time infrared marker tracking method is proposed, which is implemented with a DSP. Direct memory access (DMA) is introduced to transmit image in background. A ping-pang cache structure is also established on the DSP. Multiple infrared markers are acquired; connected component labeling, and infrared marker identification and tracking are accomplished in real-time. Experimental results show that the processing results can be obtained as soon as the image transmission is completed; the marker accuracy reaches to sub-pixel level. The actual time delay is 5.574 ms that only occupies 16.72% of the CPU cycle, which shows that the proposed method can meet the requirements of real-time processing for high speed image processing applications.