Learning a Context-Aware Environmental Residual Correlation Filter via Deep Convolution Features for Visual Object Tracking

Visual tracking has become widespread in swarm robots for intelligent video surveillance, navigation, and autonomous vehicles due to the development of machine learning algorithms. Discriminative correlation filter (DCF)-based trackers have gained increasing attention owing to their efficiency. This study proposes “context-aware environmental residual correlation filter tracking via deep convolution features (CAERDCF)” to enhance the performance of the tracker under ambiguous environmental changes. The objective is to address the challenges posed by intensive environment variations that confound DCF-based trackers, resulting in undesirable tracking drift. We present a selective spatial regularizer in the DCF to suppress boundary effects and use the target’s context information to improve tracking performance. Specifically, a regularization term comprehends the environmental residual among video sequences, enhancing the filter’s discrimination and robustness in unpredictable tracking conditions. Additionally, we propose an efficient method for acquiring environmental data using the current observation without additional computation. A multi-feature integration method is also introduced to enhance the target’s presence by combining multiple metrics. We demonstrate the efficiency and feasibility of our proposed CAERDCF approach by comparing it with existing methods using the OTB2015, TempleColor128, UAV123, LASOT, and GOT10K benchmark datasets. Specifically, our method increased the precision score by 12.9% in OTB2015 and 16.1% in TempleColor128 compared to BACF.