The arc sensor has been most widely used for weld seam tracking through welding current or voltage variation. In this work, the relation between the arc light intensity and welding condition is investigated using heat balance in the Plasma for its possible application to seam tracking in the GMAW process. The arc light intensity is derived to be the function of the arc length and welding current Experiments are carried out to verify the proposed heat balance model. Performances of least square and integration methods to process the signals for seam tracking are compared experimentally. Predicted arc light intensity shows reasonably good agreement with experimental results. The weld seam is successfully tracked through the arc light intensity. The least square and integration methods demonstrate almost same performance of seam tracking with $CO_2$gas shielding.