Visual Object Tracking

Ask about this topic

Overview

Visual object tracking estimates where a target moves over time, from a single object in a video to many objects across cameras, modalities, or 3D scenes. Common approaches match Siamese-network or Transformer features between frames, associate detections with track histories, and use motion models, geometric constraints, or memory to handle appearance changes, occlusion, and reappearance. Recent work also adapts video and segmentation foundation models, language guidance, event cameras, and learned memory control, with evaluations spanning benchmarks such as LaSOT, GOT-10k, MOT17, UAV tracking datasets, and specialized medical or 3D settings. A central challenge is making trackers reliable beyond standard benchmark conditions—especially over long absences, under severe occlusion or domain shifts—while keeping inference efficient and evaluation representative of real deployments.

Latest papers

CardsList

175 papers20 papers in the last four weeks, down 13% on the four weeks before. 0.1% of all new papers.

  1. GateMOT: Q-Gated Attention for Dense Object Tracking

    Apr 29, 2026Mingjin Lv, Zelin Liu, Feifei Shao +4Visual Object TrackingGated Attention

    Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China · Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China · La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia

  2. SAMIDARE: Advanced Tracking-by-Segmentation for Dense Scenarios

    Apr 24, 2026Shozaburo Hirano, Norimichi UkitaSports AnalyticsVisual Object Tracking

    Toyota Technological Institute

  3. Instance-level Visual Active Tracking with Occlusion-Aware Planning

    Apr 23, 2026Haowei Sun, Kai Zhou, Hao Gao +5Visual Object TrackingMotion Planning

    South China University of Technology · Pazhou Laboratory · University of Chinese Academy of Sciences +1

  4. AdaTracker: Learning Adaptive In-Context Policy for Cross-Embodiment Active Visual Tracking

    Apr 22, 2026Kui Wu, Hao Chen, Jinzhu Han +6Visual Object TrackingCross-Embodiment Robot Learning

    Beihang University, Beijing, China · City University of Macau, Macau, China · School of Artificial Intelligence, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China +3

  5. OAMVOS:2nd Report for 5th PVUW MOSE Track

    Apr 20, 2026Deshui Miao, Xingsen Huang, Yameng Gu +3Video Object SegmentationVisual Object Tracking

    1Pengcheng Laboratory · 2Guangzhou Hengyan Technology · University of California at Merced

  6. AgentRVOS for MeViS-Text Track of 5th PVUW Challenge: 3rd Method

    Apr 20, 2026Deshui Miao, Chao Yang, Chao Tian +4Image SegmentationVideo Object Segmentation

    1Pengcheng Laboratory · 2Wuhan Textile University · 3Yixiang Innovation Technology (Shenzhen)

  7. Physics-Informed Tracking (PIT)

    Apr 18, 2026Emil Hovad, Allan Peter Engsig-KarupPoint TrackingVisual Object Tracking

    Department of Applied Mathematics and Computer Science (DTU Compute) Technical University of Denmark

  8. Efficient Online 3D Multi-Camera Multi-Object Tracking and Pose Estimation

    Apr 16, 2026Linh Van Ma, Tran Thien Dat Nguyen, Juhua Hu +2Visual Object TrackingObject Pose Estimation

    School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at GIST, Gwangju, Korea · School of Electrical Engineering, Computing and Mathematical Sciences, Curtin University, Australia · School of Engineering and Technology, University of Washington, USA

  9. Temporally Consistent Long-Term Memory for 3D Single Object Tracking

    Apr 15, 2026Jaejoon Yoo, SuBeen Lee, Yerim Jeon +2Visual Object TrackingTemporal Consistency

    Sungkyunkwan University

  10. Event-Adaptive State Transition and Gated Fusion for RGB-Event Object Tracking

    Apr 15, 2026Jinlin You, Muyu Li, Xudong ZhaoVisual Object TrackingState Space Models

    Dalian University of Technology

  11. Point2Pose: Occlusion-Recovering 6D Pose Tracking and 3D Reconstruction for Multiple Unknown Objects Via 2D Point Trackers

    Apr 12, 2026Tzu-Yuan Lin, Ho Jae Lee, Kevin Doherty +2Object Pose Estimation3D MOT

    Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA · Boston Dynamics, USA

  12. AI Driven Soccer Analysis Using Computer Vision

    Apr 9, 2026Adrian Manchado, Tanner Cellio, Jonathan Keane +1Soccer AnalyticsSports Video Analysis

    Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering, Milwaukee School of Engineering, Milwaukee, WI 53202

  13. Drift-Resilient Temporal Priors for Visual Tracking

    Apr 3, 2026Yuqing Huang, Liting Lin, Weijun Zhuang +2Visual Object Tracking

    Harbin Institute of Technology, Shenzhen · Pengcheng Laboratory · Lero, the Research Ireland Centre for Software, University of Limerick +1

  14. UAV-Track VLA: Embodied Aerial Tracking via Vision-Language-Action Models

    Apr 2, 2026Qiyao Zhang, Shuhua Zheng, Jianli Sun +6Visual Object TrackingVision-Language-Action Models

    Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing, China · Flying Intelligence Team (Virtual Research Community) · Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China +4

  15. Interactive Tracking: A Human-in-the-Loop Paradigm with Memory-Augmented Adaptation

    Apr 2, 2026Yuqing Huang, Guotian Zeng, Zhenqiao Yuan +4Visual Object TrackingHuman-in-the-Loop AI

    Pengcheng Laboratory · Harbin Institute of Technology, Shenzhen · South China University of Technology +3

  16. A Dual-Stream Transformer Architecture for Illumination-Invariant TIR-LiDAR Person Tracking

    Apr 1, 2026Yuki Minase, Kanji TanakaVisual Object TrackingRobotic Perception

    Yuki Minase and Kanji Tanaka are with the Graduate School of Engineering, University of Fukui, Japan.

  17. Towards an End-to-End System for 3D Tracking of Physical Objects in Virtual Immersive Environments

    Mar 30, 2026Stanisław Knapiński, Maciej Grzeszczuk, Barbara Karpowicz +2Visual Object Tracking3D MOT

    Polsko-Japońska Akademia Technik Komputerowych w Warszawie, Koszykowa 86, Warszawa, Polska

  18. Spatial Orthogonal Refinement for Robust RGB-Event Visual Object Tracking

    Mar 29, 2026Dexing Huang, Shiao Wang, Fan Zhang +1RGB-Event Sensor FusionVisual Object Tracking

    School of Chemistry & Chemical Engineering, Anhui University, Hefei 230601, China · School of Computer Science and Technology, Anhui University, Hefei 230601, China

  19. STATrack: A Target-Aware Fully Spiking Neural Network for Efficient UAV Tracking

    Mar 29, 2026Pengzhi Zhong, Jiwei Mo, Dan Zeng +2Visual Object TrackingSpiking Neural Networks

    Guilin University of Technology, Guilin 541006, China · School of Artificial Intelligence, Sun Yat-sen University, Zhuhai 510275, China · School of Electronic Information, Central South University, Changsha, Hunan, 410083, China

  20. SpectralSplats: Robust Differentiable Tracking via Spectral Moment Supervision

    Mar 25, 2026Avigail Cohen Rimon, Amir Mann, Mirela Ben Chen +13D Gaussian SplattingDifferentiable Rendering

    Technion - Israel Institute of Technology · NVIDIA

  21. COVTrack++: Learning Open-Vocabulary Multi-Object Tracking from Continuous Videos via a Synergistic Paradigm

    Mar 25, 2026Zekun Qian, Wei Feng, Ruize Han +1Visual Object TrackingMulti-Object Tracking

    School of Computer Science and Technology, Tianjin University, Tianjin, China · Department of Computer Science, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China · Faculty of Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence, Shenzhen University of Advanced Technology

  22. Re-Prompting SAM 3 via Object Retrieval: 3rd of the 5th PVUW MOSE Track

    Mar 24, 2026Mingqi Gao, Sijie Li, Jungong HanQuery Re-IdentificationVideo Object Segmentation

    School of Computer Science, University of Sheffield · Department of Automation, Tsinghua University

  23. VSD-MOT: End-to-End Multi-Object Tracking in Low-Quality Video Scenes Guided by Visual Semantic Distillation

    Mar 21, 2026Jun DuMulti-Object TrackingVisual Object Tracking

  24. Dual Prompt-Driven Feature Encoding for Nighttime UAV Tracking

    Mar 20, 2026Yiheng Wang, Changhong Fu, Liangliang Yao +2Visual Object TrackingVisual Prompt Learning

    Pratt School of Engineering, Duke University, Durham 27705, United States · School of Mechanical Engineering, Tongji University, Shanghai 201804, China · Shanghai Key Laboratory of Wearable Robotics and Human Machine Interaction, Tongji University, Shanghai 201804, China +1

  25. K-GMRF: Kinetic Gauss-Markov Random Field for First-Principles Covariance Tracking on Lie Groups

    Mar 20, 2026ZhiMing LiCovariance EstimationVisual Object Tracking

    School of Computer Science and Technology, Tianjin University

  26. ROFT-VINS: Robust Feature Tracking-based Visual-Inertial State Estimation for Harsh Environment

    Mar 19, 2026Sanghyun Park, Soohee HanVisual-Inertial OdometryVisual Object Tracking

    Department of Convergence IT Engineering, POSTECH, Pohang, 37673, Korea · Department of Electrical Engineering and of Convergence IT Engineering, POSTECH, Pohang, 37673, Korea

  27. Sparse3DTrack: Monocular 3D Object Tracking Using Sparse Supervision

    Mar 18, 2026Nikhil Gosala, B. Ravi Kiran, Senthil Yogamani +1Visual Object Tracking3D MOT

    University of Freiburg, Germany · Qualcomm SARL France · Automated Driving, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc., USA

  28. Uni-MDTrack: Learning Decoupled Memory and Dynamic States for Parameter-Efficient Visual Tracking in All Modality

    Mar 15, 2026Wenrui Cai, Zhenyi Lu, Yuzhe Li +4Multimodal Visual Object TrackingVisual Object Tracking

    School of Computer Science and Engineering, Beihang University, Beijing 100191, China

  29. Real-time Rendering-based Surgical Instrument Tracking via Evolutionary Optimization

    Mar 12, 2026Hanyang Hu, Zekai Liang, Florian Richter +1Visual Object TrackingCovariance Matrix Adaptation Evolution Strategy

    Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093 USA.

  30. HelixTrack: Event-Based Tracking and RPM Estimation of Propeller-like Objects

    Mar 10, 2026Radim Spetlik, Michal Pliska, Vojtěch Vrba +1Visual Object TrackingEvent-Based Vision

    Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Czech Technical University in Prague