Proposed Tracking Algorithm Research Articles

Incremental visual tracking via sparse discriminative classifier

Currently, visual object tracking is a core research area as it can be applied in many applications of computer vision. However, tracking of a visual object is a difficult task as it can go through different varying conditions like occlusion of the target object, appearance variation, illumination variation, etc. during the tracking process. An efficient and robust visual object tracking based on sparse discriminative classier (SDC) and principal component analysis (PCA) subspace representation is presented in this work. The PCA subspace representation modelled the appearance model of the target object and SDC separates the target object and background object very efficiently. The computational complexity is much better than the other existing methods in the literature. Both quantitative and qualitative analyses of different video sequences are done to compare the proposed tracking algorithm with the other existing tracking algorithms. The experimental results show that the proposed method outperforms the other existing tracking algorithms.

A Fluidic Soft Robot for Needle Guidance and Motion Compensation in Intratympanic Steroid Injections

Intratympanic steroid injections are commonly employed in treating ear diseases, such as sudden sensorineural hearing loss or Meniere's disease through drug delivery via the middle ear. Whilst being an effective treatment, the procedure has to be performed by a trained surgeon to avoid delicate regions in the patient's anatomy and is considered painful despite the use of topical anaesthesia. In this letter we introduce a fluid-driven soft robotic system which aims at increasing patient-comfort during the injection by counteracting unwanted needle motion, reducing the cognitive load of the clinician by autonomously identifying sensitive regions in the ear and de-risking the procedure by steering the needle towards the desired injection site. A design comprising of six embedded fluidic actuators is presented, which allow for translation and rotation of the needle as well as adaptive stiffening in the coupling between needle and ear canal. The system's steering-capabilities are investigated and the differential kinematics derived to demonstrate trajectory tracking in Cartesian space. A vision system is developed which enables tracking of anatomical landmarks on the tympanic membrane and thus locating the desired needle insertion site. The integrated system shows the ability to provide a safe guide for the inserted needle towards a desired target direction while significantly reducing needle motion. The proposed tracking algorithm is able to identify the desired needle insertion site and could be employed to avoid delicate anatomical regions.

Triple-feature-based Particle Filter Algorithm Used in Vehicle Tracking Applications

This work is oriented toward video tracking of vehicles in a typical traffic environment, based on particle filters. The proposed tracking algorithm is based on simultaneous usage of t ...

Secure multiple target tracking based on clustering intersection points of measurement circles in wireless sensor networks

The problem of tracking multiple targets simultaneously using a wireless sensor network is studied in this paper. We introduce a new algorithm, based only on the received signal power measurements, to estimate the location of multiple indistinguishable targets. For each node, a circle centered at the location of the node with a radius equal to the estimated distance between the node and the nearest target is drawn. The intersection points of all these measurement circles are calculated and clustered using a density-based clustering algorithm. The centroid of each generated cluster can be a candidate location, corresponding to a target. In order to choose the best candidate locations, we introduce a new robust criterion, which is capable of dealing with the problem of malicious nodes. Besides, the selected candidate is given to the Gauss–Newton iterative search method, which can increase the accuracy of tracking. We also propose three different approaches for reducing the effect of malicious nodes on the accuracy of tracking. Furthermore, a scheme is proposed for identifying the malicious nodes. We demonstrate the robustness and accuracy of our proposed tracking algorithm via simulation results and compare our results with the Multi-resolution search algorithm and the Expectation–Maximization algorithm.

Improving the Performance of Target Tracker by Deepening Neural Network

Visual target tracking is an important topic in the field of vision research. Its main task is to automatically process and analyze the input video information by computer, so as to obtain the position and key motion information of the target in the input video sequence, and to facilitate the subsequent research and analysis of the track and behavior of the tracking target. At present, researchers in the field of visual target tracking have proposed a series of excellent algorithms and frameworks. However, in view of the problems of deformation, occlusion, illumination change and random motion in the process of target tracking, it is still a great challenge to ensure the real-time, accuracy and robustness of tracking algorithms. In recent years, with the excellent performance of depth neural network in many tasks, the fusion of depth features based on relevant filtering algorithms to achieve target tracking tasks has become a hot research topic. In this paper, an improved target tracking algorithm is proposed based on the framework of classical target tracking methods: (1) Integrating deeper ResNet-101 deep convolution neural network model to detect target features more accurately. (2) Improve the model training method to save the network training cost. Finally, the performance of the proposed tracking algorithm is tested on the OTB target tracking standard dataset, and compared with other mainstream algorithms. The results show that the improved method proposed in this paper can effectively improve the tracking effectiveness and robustness.

Enhancement Performance of Multiple Objects Detection and Tracking for Real-time and Online Applications

Multi-object detection and tracking systems represent one of the basic and important tasks of surveillance and video traffic systems. Recently. The proposed tracking algorithms focused on the detection mechanism. It showed significant improvement in performance in the field of computer vision. Though. It faced many challenges and problems, such as many blockages and segmentation of paths, in addition to the increasing number of identification keys and false-positive paths. In this work, an algorithm was proposed that integrates information on appearance and visibility features to improve the tracker's performance. It enables us to track multiple objects throughout the video and for a longer period of clogging and buffer a number of ID switches. An effective and accurate data set, tools, and metrics were also used to measure the efficiency of the proposed algorithm. The experimental results show the great improvement in the performance of the tracker, with high accuracy of more than 65%, which achieves competitive performance with the existing algorithms.

Tracking In-Cabin Astronauts Using Deep Learning and Head Motion Clues

A person-following robot is under development for astronaut assistance on the Chinese Space Station. Real-time astronaut detection and tracking are the most important prerequisites for in-cabin flying assistant robots so that they can follow a specific astronaut and offer him/her assistance. In the limited space in the space station cabin, astronauts stand close to each other when working collaboratively; thus, large regions of their bodies tend to overlap in the image. In addition, because astronauts wear the same clothes most of the time, it is difficult to distinguish an individual astronaut using human body features. In this paper, we distinguish the astronauts by tracking their heads in the image. A deep learning model trained using big data is proposed for effective head detection. In addition, a motion model based on spatial clues is combined with the head detection results to track astronauts in the scene. A complete pipeline of the algorithm has been implemented and run efficiently on the Tegra X2 embedded AI microprocessor. A set of experiments were carried out and successfully validated the effectiveness of the proposed tracking algorithm. This algorithm is a step toward the implementation of robot assistants, especially in resource-limited environments.

Visual tracking using convolutional features with sparse coding

Visual object tracking has become one of the most active research topics in computer vision, and it has been applied in several commercial applications. Several visual trackers have been presented in the last two decades. They target different tracking objectives. Object tracking from a real-time video is a challenging problem. Therefore, a robust tracker is required to consider many aspects of videos such as camera motion, occlusion, illumination effect, clutter, and similar appearance. In this paper, we propose an efficient object tracking algorithm that adaptively represents the object appearance using CNN-based features. A sparse measurement matrix is proposed to extract the compressed features for the appearance model without sacrificing the performance. We compress sample images of the foreground object and the background by the sparse matrix. When re-detection is needed, the tracking algorithm conducts an SVM classifier on the extracted features with online update in the compressed domain. A search strategy is proposed to reduce the computational burden in the detection step. Extensive simulations with a challenging video dataset demonstrate that the proposed tracking algorithm provides real-time tracking, while delivering substantially better tracking performance than those of the state-of-the-art techniques in terms of robustness, accuracy, and efficiency.

Field programmable Gate Array based Real Time Object Tracking using Partial Least Square Analysis

In this paper, we proposed an object tracking algorithm in real time implementation of moving object tracking system using Field programmable gate array (FPGA). Object tracking is considered as a binary classification problem and one of the approaches to this problem is that to extract appropriate features from the appearance of the object based on partial least square (PLS) analysis method, which is a low dimension reduction technique in the subspace. In this method, the adaptive appearance model integrated with PLS analysis is used for continuous update of the appearance change of the target over time. For robust and efficient tracking, particle filtering is used in between every two consecutive frames of the video. This has implemented using Cadence and Virtuoso software integrated environment with MATLAB. The experimental results are performed on challenging video sequences to show the performance of the proposed tracking algorithm using FPGA in real time.

Scale prediction based MDNet for infrared target tracking

Infrared target tracking is increasingly becoming important for various applications in recent years. However, it is still a challenging task as limited information can be obtained from the infrared image. Inspired by the excellent performance of deep tracker, a novel tracker based on MDNet is proposed. As the prior information has great value for target tracking, a modified Back-Propagation network is used for predicting the scale of target during tracking. The result of the prediction is used for generating candidate windows for online learning, which can improve the performance of tracker. To evaluate the proposed tracking algorithm, we performed experiments on the VOT-TIR2016 and AMCOM infrared data. The experimental results demonstrate that our algorithm provides a 1.94% relative gain in accuracy and 21.4% in robustness on VOT-TIR2016 when compared with MDNet.

A Modified Bayesian Framework for Multi-Sensor Target Tracking with Out-of-Sequence-Measurements.

Target detection and tracking is important in military as well as in civilian applications. In order to detect and track high-speed incoming threats, modern surveillance systems are equipped with multiple sensors to overcome the limitations of single-sensor based tracking systems. This research proposes the use of information from RADAR and Infrared sensors (IR) for tracking and estimating target state dynamics. A new technique is developed for information fusion of the two sensors in a way that enhances performance of the data association algorithm. The measurement acquisition and processing time of these sensors is not the same; consequently the fusion center measurements arrive out of sequence. To ensure the practicality of system, proposed algorithm compensates the Out of Sequence Measurements (OOSMs) in cluttered environment. This is achieved by a novel algorithm which incorporates a retrodiction based approach to compensate the effects of OOSMs in a modified Bayesian technique. The proposed modification includes a new gating strategy to fuse and select measurements from two sensors which originate from the same target. The state estimation performance is evaluated in terms of Root Mean Squared Error (RMSE) for both position and velocity, whereas, track retention statistics are evaluated to gauge the performance of the proposed tracking algorithm. The results clearly show that the proposed technique improves track retention and and false track discrimination (FTD).

재밍 환경에서 전자전 수신기를 이용한 다중 표적 추적 기법 연구

A tracking algorithm considering the characteristics of threat target tracking in a jamming operating environment is required to interfere and deceive the onboard radars of multiple threat targets(e.g., aircraft and missiles) during the jamming of army communications. This paper proposes a new algorithm for tracking multiple threat targets in a jamming operating environment. The proposed algorithm consists of two stages: 1) tracking of azimuth direction and elevation using an interactive multiple model and a joint probabilistic data association filter; and 2) adaptive adjustment of the noise covariance to solve the untraceable scenario problem for the threat targets. The performance of the proposed tracking algorithm is validated by the results obtained by modeling the simulator considering the threat target characteristics in a jamming operating environment.

A robust tracking algorithm with on online detector and high-confidence updating strategy

The discriminative correlation filter-based tracking algorithms cannot correctly track the target if the target is occluded or out of view and reappears in the field of vision, and they cannot ensure the tracking model is updated correctly if the tracking information is not correct. In this paper, a robust correlation tracking algorithm is proposed. Here, a failure detection strategy, which is based on the maximal confidence score and peak-to-sidelobe ratio to detect or measure the reliability of the tracking result, is integrated into the tracker. Moreover, the redetection module based on the keypoints matching method for consensus voting is introduced into the proposed tracking algorithm to redetect objects in case of tracking failure. In addition, an adaptive high-confidence updating method is proposed to avoid error model information introduced into the tracker caused by occlusions, out-of-view or illumination changes, where the learning rate is determined by the change rate of the confidence map. The OTB-2015 dataset and VOT-2016 dataset are used to evaluate the performance of the proposed tracking algorithm. The experimental results show that the proposed tracking algorithm performs better than most of the state-of-the-art trackers, and it has higher accuracy and robustness than the DSST tracker.

UAV tracking based on saliency detection

This paper presents a novel unmanned aerial vehicle tracking framework. First, hierarchical convolutional neural network features are used to track the object independently in a correlation filter tracking framework. Second, a stability criterion is proposed, which is based on the variance of tracking results of each layer. Next, tracking result is adaptively fused via the variance. Meanwhile, the criterion can be used to measure the quality of tracking results. A saliency detection method is utilized to generate candidate regions when tracking failure occurs. By virtue of this method, our tracking algorithm can robustly cope with appearance changes and prevent drifting issues. Experimental results show that our proposed tracking algorithm performs favorably against state-of-the-art methods on two benchmark datasets.

Vision tracking based on adaptive interactive fusion

Under the influence of COVID-19, detection and identification of moving targets are very important for personnel management. A lot of research work has improved the accuracy and robustness of the moving target tracking method, but the recognition accuracy of the traditional target tracking method in complex scenes (lighting changes, background interference, posture changes and other factors) is not satisfactory. In this paper, in view of the limitations of single feature representation of target objects, the method of fusion of HSV color features and edge direction features is used to identify and detect moving targets. In each frame of the tracking process, the weight of each feature is adjusted adaptively according to the proposed fusion strategy, and the position of the target is located by using the method of double template matching. Experiments show that the proposed tracking algorithm based on multi feature fusion can meet the requirements of moving target recognition in complex scenes. The method proposed in this paper has a certain reference value for personnel management under the influence of COVID-19.

An Adaptive Turn Rate Estimation for Tracking a Maneuvering Target

Tracking maneuvering targets accurately is one of the most challenging tasks in the design of aircraft tracking systems. For efficient tracking performance, the target motion predicted by the target motion model needs to match the target's actual motion during the maneuver. For tracking a maneuvering target, a combination of the constant velocity (CV) model and the coordinated turn (CT) model with a known turn rate are incorporated in the interacting multiple model (IMM) algorithm. However, in such a scheme when a target performs an unexpected maneuver, the tracking performance deteriorates, or the scheme may even fail to track the target. To overcome this problem, there exists a scheme in the literature, in which instead of using an a priori knowledge of the target turn rate, it is estimated adaptively using the target acceleration and speed. However, this algorithm uses a three-dimensional model to estimate the turn rate in two-dimensional space, which may result in an inaccurate estimation of the target acceleration, and thus may lead to in inaccurate turn rate value. In this paper, an adaptive algorithm to track a maneuvering target in an IMM framework is proposed. Estimating the turn rate is based on the speed of the target and the radius of the turn, where the latter is computed by a simple method using the previous three successive measurements. Further, a detailed study to select an appropriate transition probability matrix for the proposed algorithm is carried out. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed tracking algorithm outperforms the other algorithms in terms of its tracking accuracy and consistency, particularly in the realistic situation when neither an a priori knowledge about the target turn rate nor about the range rate information is available to the tracking algorithm.

Object Tracking Based on Channel Attention

Object tracking is one of the important research topics in computer vision. Despite the great progress in this area, effectively and efficiently tracking object in videos still remains challenging especially in scenarios of rapid movement of objects, illumination changes, appearance of similar objects in the background. In this work, we propose an object tracking method by improving the state-of-the-art tracker MDNet based on channel attention, which can distinguish among similar objects by suppressing the background and highlighting the object. We integrate the channel attention module and group normalization into MDNet network. To validate the effectiveness of the proposed tracker, we compare it with a number of existing state-of-the-art trackers in terms of success rate and precision on OTB-100, OTB-50 and CVPR 2013 datasets. The test results have demonstrated the effectiveness and improvement of the proposed tracking algorithm.

Visual Tracking With Online Assessment and Improved Sampling Strategy

The kernelized correlation filter (KCF) is one of the most successful trackers in computer vision today. However its performance may be significantly degraded in a wide range of challenging conditions such as occlusion and out of view. For many applications, particularly safety critical applications (e.g. autonomous driving), it is of profound importance to have consistent and reliable performance during all the operation conditions. This paper addresses this issue of the KCF based trackers by the introduction of two novel modules, namely online assessment of response map, and a strategy of combining cyclically shifted sampling with random sampling in deep feature space. A method of online assessment of response map is proposed to evaluate the tracking performance by constructing a 2-D Gaussian estimation model. Then a strategy of combining cyclically shifted sampling with random sampling in deep feature space is presented to improve the tracking performance when the tracking performance is assessed to be unreliable based on the response map. Therefore, the module of online assessment can be regarded as the trigger for the second module. Experiments verify the tracking performance is significantly improved particularly in challenging conditions as demonstrated by both quantitative and qualitative comparisons of the proposed tracking algorithm with the state-of-the-art tracking algorithms on OTB-2013 and OTB-2015 datasets.

Manifold Siamese Network: A Novel Visual Tracking ConvNet for Autonomous Vehicles

Visual tracking is a vital component of autonomous driving perception system. Siamese networks have achieved great success in both accuracy and speed for visual tracking tasks. These Siamese trackers share a similar framework in which each tracker consists of two network branches for exploring semantic information. However, the performance of Siamese trackers is limited by an insufficient semantic template and an unsatisfactory updating strategy. To tackle these problems, we propose a manifold Siamese network for visual tracking that can simultaneously utilize semantic and geometric information. A manifold sample pool is constructed to exploit the manifold structure of image object sequences. This sample pool is dynamically learned via a fast Gaussian mixture model (GMM). After obtaining a manifold sample template, we design a deep architecture based on a correlation filter (CF) network and append a novel manifold feature branch. The network remains fully convolutional and can train a template to discriminate exemplar image and arbitrarily size search image. Then, a triplet occlusion score function cooperates with an effective update method that is established to prevent model drift. Extensive experiments show that the proposed tracking algorithm performs favorably compared with the state-of-the-art methods on three standard benchmark datasets at a high framerate, which is very suitable for autonomous driving.

Efficient and robust segmentation and tracking of sperm cells in microscopic image sequences

Sperm motility analysis is an important factor in male fertility diagnosis. This article presents a hybrid segmentation method to detect sperm cells, which is robust to density variation of the cells in the image sequences. In addition, a preprocessing scheme is employed to remove fixed sperm cells and debris, which facilitate and speed up the cells' tracking stage. The article also proposes an automated sperm‐tracking algorithm in semen samples image sequences. It is a multi‐step tracking scheme, which is an enhanced version of adaptive window average speed (AWAS) tracking algorithm. It retrieves lost sperm cells during the tracking stage in adjacent frames and alleviates the cells collide problem. The proposed tracking algorithm provides both superior accuracy and higher speed compared to those of the other competitive algorithms for image sequences regardless of their particle densities.