Ivan DotuPatricio Guisado, Miguel ÁngelBerlanga de Jesús, AntonioGarcía, JesúsMolina López, José Manuel2014-02-212014-02-212011-08Journal of Heuristics, August 2011, 17 (4), pp 415-4401381-1231 (Print)1572-9397 (Online)https://hdl.handle.net/10016/18334In this paper, we present a fast and efficient technique for the data association problem applied to visual tracking systems. Visual tracking process is formulated as a combinatorial hypotheses search with a heuristic evaluation function taking into account structural and specific information such as distance, shape, color, etc. We introduce a Tabu Search algorithm which performs a search on an indirect space. A novel problem formulation allows us to transform any solution into the real search space, which is needed for fitness calculation, in linear time. This new formulation and the use of auxiliary structures yields a fast transformation from a blob-to-track assignment space to the real shape and position of tracks space (while calculating fitness in an incremental fashion), which is key in order to produce efficient and fast results. Other previous approaches are based on statistical techniques or on evolutionary algorithms. These techniques are quite efficient and robust although they cannot converge as fast as our approach.26application/pdfeng© 2010 Springer Science+Business MediaVideo-trackingTabu searchData associationresearch article10.1007/s10732-010-9140-4open access4154440Journal of Heuristics17AR/0000007681