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Incorporating multiple cameras is an effective solution to improve the performance and robustness of multi-target tracking to occlusion and appearance ambiguities. In this paper, we propose a new multi-camera multi-target tracking method based on a space-time-view hyper-graph that encodes higher-order constraints (i.e., beyond pairwise relations) on 3D geometry, appearance, motion continuity, and trajectory smoothness among 2D tracklets within and across different camera views. We solve tracking in each single view and reconstruction of tracked trajectories in 3D environment simultaneously by formulating the problem as an efficient search of dense sub-hypergraphs on the space-time-view hyper-graph using a sampling based approach. Experimental results on the PETS 2009 dataset and MOTChallenge 2015 3D benchmark demonstrate that our method performs favorably against the state-of-the-art methods in both single-camera and multi-camera multi-target tracking, while achieving close to real-time running efficiency. We also provide experimental analysis of the influence of various aspects of our method to the final tracking performance.

In this paper, we focus mainly on designing a Multi-Target Object Tracking algorithm that would produce high-quality trajectories while maintaining low computational costs. Using online association, such features enable this algorithm to be used in applications like autonomous driving and autonomous surveillance. We propose CNN-based, instead of hand-crafted, features to lead to higher accuracies. We also present a novel grouping method for 2-D online environments without prior knowledge of camera parameters and an affinity measure based on the groups maintained in previous frames. Comprehensive evaluations of our algorithm (CNNMTT) on a publicly available and widely used dataset (MOT16) reveal that the CNNMTT method achieves high quality tracking results in comparison to the state of the art while being faster and involving much less computational cost.

Many multi-target tracking applications (e.g., tracking multiple targets with LiDAR or millimeter-wave radar) are challenged by closely spaced targets. In this work, we propose a method for the tracking of multiple extended targets or unresolvable group targets in such scenarios. The approach builds on the cardinality probability hypothesis density (CPHD) filtering framework for computational efficiency, models the target’s extent with the multiplicative error model (MEM), and uses variational Gaussian mixture model (VGMM)-derived responsibilities to drive probabilistic data association (PDA) measurement updates. This effectively mitigates state fusion between closely spaced targets and yields more accurate state estimation. In experiments on diverse simulated and real datasets, the proposed method consistently outperforms existing approaches, achieving the lowest localization, shape estimation, and cardinality estimation errors while maintaining an acceptable runtime and scalability.

Tracking multiple targets within a group is a challenging task in the radar field, especially for a bird flock. Targets in a group are usually closely spaced and exhibit similar characteristics. Additionally, the tracking radar typically employs a narrow beam to achieve a high range–angular resolution, resulting in incomplete measurements within the limited beamwidth. These factors lead to false association and track fragmentation in target tracking. However, in addition to kinematic characteristics, birds exhibit temporally correlated micro-Doppler signatures because of their wingbeat behavior, which can be utilized in target tracking. Therefore, this paper proposes an adaptive TPHD tracking method using Doppler features. First, a Doppler temporal contrastive network is designed to learn the micro-Doppler representation for the association of birds. Then, the learned feature is fused with kinematic parameters, using XGBoost to guide the weight update in the filter. Moreover, adaptive mechanisms are incorporated into the TPHD filter to achieve stable tracking under incomplete measurements. Simulation and experimental results verified the effectiveness of the proposed method and showed better tracking performance than the competing method.

We describe an end-to-end framework for learning parameters of min-cost flow multi-target tracking problem with quadratic trajectory interactions including suppression of overlapping tracks and contextual cues about co-occurrence of different objects. Our approach utilizes structured prediction with a tracking-specific loss function to learn the complete set of model parameters. In this learning framework, we evaluate two different approaches to finding an optimal set of tracks under a quadratic model objective, one based on an linear program (LP) relaxation and the other based on novel greedy variants of dynamic programming that handle pairwise interactions. We find the greedy algorithms achieve almost equivalent accuracy to the LP relaxation while being up to 10 × faster than a commercial LP solver. We evaluate trained models on three challenging benchmarks. Surprisingly, we find that with proper parameter learning, our simple data association model without explicit appearance/motion reasoning is able to achieve comparable or better accuracy than many state-of-the-art methods that use far more complex motion features or appearance affinity metric learning.

In the process of multi-target tracking, the complex underwater acoustic channel, target model mismatch, target strong maneuvering and other factors are easy to cause track interruption and rerun, which have a bad influence on the situation assessment and tactical decision of the Unmanned sonar system. Aiming at the problem of track interruption, this paper integrates the track adhesion algorithm into the active multi-target tracking algorithm. Simulation results show that the track adhesion algorithm can effectively improve the correct track association rate and track lifetime. By comparing the effect of the new and old methods with the sea test data, the track adhesion can effectively solve the problem of track interruption in the case of target track maneuvering and improve the track life.

Infrared thermal imaging is useful for human body recognition for search and rescue (SAR) missions. This paper discusses thermal object tracking for SAR missions with a drone. The entire process consists of object detection and multiple-target tracking. The You-Only-Look-Once (YOLO) detection model is utilized to detect people in thermal videos. Multiple-target tracking is performed via track initialization, maintenance, and termination. Position measurements in two consecutive frames initialize the track. Tracks are maintained using a Kalman filter. A bounding box gating rule is proposed for the measurement-to-track association. This proposed rule is combined with the statistically nearest neighbor association rule to assign measurements to tracks. The track-to-track association selects the fittest track for a track and fuses them. In the experiments, three videos of three hikers simulating being lost in the mountains were captured using a thermal imaging camera on a drone. Capturing was assumed under difficult conditions; the objects are close or occluded, and the drone flies arbitrarily in horizontal and vertical directions. Robust tracking results were obtained in terms of average total track life and average track purity, whereas the average mean track life was shortened in harsh searching environments.

This paper proposes a distributed estimation and control algorithm that enables a team of mobile robots to search for and track an unknown number of targets. These targets may be stationary or moving, and the number of targets may vary over time as targets enter and leave the area of interest. The robots are equipped with sensors that have a finite field of view and may experience false negative and false positive detections. The robots use a novel, distributed formulation of the Probability Hypothesis Density (PHD) filter, which accounts for the limitations of the sensors, to estimate the number of targets and the positions of the targets. The robots then use Lloyd’s algorithm, a distributed control algorithm that has been shown to be effective for coverage and search tasks, to drive their motion within the environment. We utilize the output of the PHD filter as the importance weighting function within Lloyd’s algorithm. This causes the robots to be drawn towards areas that are likely to contain targets. We demonstrate the efficacy of our proposed algorithm, including comparisons to a coverage-based controller with a uniform importance weighting function, through an extensive series of simulated experiments. These experiments show teams of 10–100 robots successfully tracking 10–50 targets in both 2D and 3D environments.

In real-time remote sensing application, frames of data are continuously flowing into the processing system. The capability of detecting objects of interest and tracking them as they move is crucial to many critical surveillance and monitoring missions. Detecting small objects using remote sensors is an ongoing, challenging problem. Since object(s) are located far away from the sensor, the target’s Signal-to-Noise-Ratio (SNR) is low. The Limit of Detection (LOD) for remote sensors is bounded by what is observable on each image frame. In this paper, we present a new method, a “Multi-frame Moving Object Detection System (MMODS)”, to detect small, low SNR objects that are beyond what a human can observe in a single video frame. This is demonstrated by using simulated data where our technology-detected objects are as small as one pixel with a targeted SNR, close to 1:1. We also demonstrate a similar improvement using live data collected with a remote camera. The MMODS technology fills a major technology gap in remote sensing surveillance applications for small target detection. Our method does not require prior knowledge about the environment, pre-labeled targets, or training data to effectively detect and track slow- and fast-moving targets, regardless of the size or the distance.

This paper investigates the multi-target tracking problem of networked heterogeneous collaborative robots with parametric uncertainties and external disturbances in the task space, where each robot can be kinematic redundant or non-redundant. The acceleration of the targets can either belong to L 2 or L ∞ space. A uniform distributed controller–estimator algorithm is designed to solve the aforementioned problem. The sufficient conditions for both zero-error stability and Lagrange stability of the closed-loop system are derived. Finally, simulation examples are illustrated to demonstrate the effectiveness of the main results.