Understanding how whisker based tactile information is represented in the nervous system requires quantification of sensory input and observation of neural activity during whisking and whisker touch. Chronic electrophysiological methods have long been available to study neural responses in awake and behaving animals however methods to quantify the sensory input on whiskers are yet to be developed. Here we describe an unsupervised algorithm to track whisker movements in high-speed video recordings and to quantify the statistics of the tactile information on whiskers in freely behaving animals during haptic object exploration. The algorithm does not require human identification of whiskers, nor does it assume the shape, location, orientation, length of whiskers or direction of the whisker movements. The algorithm performs well upon temporary loss of whisker visibility and under low-light/low-contrast conditions even with inherent anisotropic noise and non-Gaussian variability in the signal. Using this algorithm we define the speed (Protraction (P), 1081±322; Retraction (R), 1564±549 deg/sec), duration (P, 34±10; R, 24±8 ms), amplitude (P=R, 40±13 deg) and frequency (19±7 Hz) of active whisking in freely behaving mice. We furthermore quantify whisker deflection induced changes in whisking kinematics and calculate the statistics (i.e. speed, amplitude and duration) of whisker touch and finally show that whisker deprivation does not alter whisking kinematics during haptic exploration.