The invention relates to a human body tracking method based on a self-adaptive kernel function and mean value shifting. The human body tracking method includes two stages, the first stage is a learning stage, a set of training samples of human body walking is firstly read, human body prospect shapes are mapped to be coordinates in a low-dimensional space through a dimensionality reduction algorithm, a low-dimensional human body shape space is obtained, the human body prospect shapes are then recovered through an interpolation reconstruction algorithm, and parameters, capable of mapping from a low dimension to a high dimension, of the interpolation reconstruction algorithm can be obtained. The second stage is a tracking stage, a human body optimum kernel shape in a video frame is searched for in the low-dimensional human body shape space, and the human body in the video frame is tracked by using a mean value shifting algorithm. Compared with the prior art, the human body tracking method improves the shape of the kernel function in a traditional mean value shifting algorithm, so that the shape of the kernel function is not fixed and changes in a self-adaptive mode according to changes of shapes of the tracked human body, histogram modeling and matching of the kernel function are further performed in the high dimension space, and therefore the performance of a human body tracking technology is improved.