The CONDENSATION (Conditional Density Propagation) algorithm has a robust tracking performance and suitability for real-time implementation. However, the CONDENSATION tracker has some difficulties with real-time implementation for multiple people tracking since it requires very complicated shape modeling and a large number of samples for precise tracking performance. Further, it shows a poor tracking performance in the case of close or partially occluded people. To overcome these difficulties, we present three improvements: First, we construct effective templates of people´s shapes using the SOM (Self-Organizing Map). Second, we take the discrete HMM (Hidden Markov Modeling) for an accurate dynamical model of the people´s shape transition. Third, we use the competition rule to separate close or partially occluded people effectively. Simulation results shows that the proposed CONDENSATION algorithm can achieve robust and real-time tracking in the image sequences of a crowd of people.