Multi-Class Multi-Object Tracking in Aerial Images Using Uncertainty Estimation

Multi-object tracking (MOT) is a vital component in understanding the surrounding environ ments. Previous research has demonstrated that MOT can successfully detect and track surrounding objects. Nonetheless, inaccurate classification of the tracking objects remains a challenge that needs to be solved. When an object approaching from a distance is recognized, not only detection and tracking but also classification to determine the level of risk must be performed. However, considering the erroneous classification results obtained from the detection as the track class can lead to performance degradation problems. In this paper, we discuss the limitations of classification in tracking under the classification uncertainty of the detector. To address this problem, a class update module is proposed, which leverages the class uncertainty estimation of the detector to mitigate the classification error of the tracker. We evaluated our approach on the VisDrone-MOT2021 dataset, which includes multi-class and uncertain fardistance object tracking. We show that our method has low certainty at a distant object, and quickly classifies the class as the object approaches and the level of certainty increases. In this manner, our method outperforms previous approaches across different detectors. In particular, the You Only Look Once (YOLO)v8 detector shows a notable enhancement of 4.33 multi-object tracking accuracy (MOTA) in comparison to the previous state-of-the-art method. This intuitive insight improves MOT to track approaching objects from a distance and quickly classify them.