Image and video based remote target localization and tracking on smartphones

Smartphones are becoming popular nowadays not only because of its communication functionality but also, more importantly, its powerful sensing and computing capability. In this paper, we describe a novel and accurate image and video based remote target localization and tracking system using the Android smartphones, by leveraging its built-in sensors such as camera, digital compass, GPS, etc. Even though many other distance estimation or localization devices are available, our all-in-one, easy-to-use localization and tracking system on low cost and commodity smartphones is first of its kind. Furthermore, smartphones' exclusive user-friendly interface has been effectively taken advantage of by our system to facilitate low complexity and high accuracy. Our experimental results show that our system works accurately and efficiently.