THERMAL- AND MODULATED-LIGHT-BASED PASSIVE TRACKING SYSTEM

A passive-tracking system is described herein. In one example, the passive-tracking system includes a thermal sensor configured to generate a series of thermal frames based on an object in a monitoring area. In this example, the system also includes a processor and a time-of-flight (ToF) sensor configured to generate a series of modulated-light frames based on the object. The processor may be configured to receive the thermal and modulated-light frames and based at least in part on the data of the frames, generate a novelty representation of the object. Based on this data, the processor may also be configured to determine whether the object is human and if so, generate a three-dimensional (3D) position of the human object. The processor may also be configured to passively track the human object over time by, based on the novelty representation, selectively updating the 3D position of the human object.