Object Tracking

Definition

Object tracking is the process of following the movement of an object across a sequence of images or video frames.

Purpose

The purpose is to monitor and analyze motion for applications in surveillance, sports analytics, and autonomous vehicles.

Importance

• Critical for real-time perception in self-driving cars.
• Used in video analytics for security and entertainment.
• Accuracy depends on handling occlusion and motion blur.
• Resource-intensive for high-resolution video.

How It Works

1. Detect objects in the initial frame.
2. Assign unique identifiers to each object.
3. Predict object positions in subsequent frames.
4. Update trajectories with detection and tracking models.
5. Output continuous motion paths.

Examples (Real World)

• Tesla Autopilot: tracks cars and pedestrians for navigation.
• Hawk-Eye: tracks balls in sports broadcasting.
• CCTV surveillance: tracks individuals across camera feeds.

References / Further Reading

• Multiple Object Tracking Benchmark (MOT).
• IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence.
• OpenCV Object Tracking Module.