Robust Correlation Tracking for UAV with Feature Integration and Response Map Enhancement

• Published in: Remote sensing (Basel, Switzerland) Vol. 14; no. 16; p. 4073
• Main Authors: Lin, Bin, Bai, Yunpeng, Bai, Bendu, Li, Ying
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Basel MDPI AG 01-08-2022
• Subjects: Algorithms; Benchmarks; Contamination; Correlation; correlation filter; Deep learning; Drift; Dynamic models; Feature extraction; feature integration; Integration; Methods; Neural networks; Remote sensing; response map enhancement; Risk reduction; Robustness; Tracking; unmanned aerial vehicle; Unmanned aerial vehicles; visual object tracking
• ISSN: 2072-4292; 2072-4292
• DOI: 10.3390/rs14164073

Recently, correlation filter (CF)-based tracking algorithms have attained extensive interest in the field of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) tracking. Nonetheless, existing trackers still struggle with selecting suitable features and alleviating the model drift issue for online UAV tracking. In this paper, a robust CF-based tracker with feature integration and response map enhancement is proposed. Concretely, we develop a novel feature integration method that comprehensively describes the target by leveraging auxiliary gradient information extracted from the binary representation. Subsequently, the integrated features are utilized to learn a background-aware correlation filter (BACF) for generating a response map that implies the target location. To mitigate the risk of model drift, we introduce saliency awareness in the BACF framework and further propose an adaptive response fusion strategy to enhance the discriminating capability of the response map. Moreover, a dynamic model update mechanism is designed to prevent filter contamination and maintain tracking stability. Experiments on three public benchmarks verify that the proposed tracker outperforms several state-of-the-art algorithms and achieves a real-time tracking speed, which can be applied in UAV tracking scenarios efficiently.