Exploring the State-of-the-Art in Multi-Object Tracking: A Comprehensive Survey, Evaluation, Challenges, and Future Directions

Multiple object tracking (MOT), as a typical application scenario of computer vision, has attracted significant attention from both academic and industrial communities. With its rapid development, MOT has becomes an hot topic. However, maintaining robust MOT in complex scenarios still faces significant challenges, such as irregular motion patterns, similar appearances, and frequent occlusions. Based on an extensive investigation into the state-of-the-art MOT, this survey has made the following efforts: 1) listing down preceding MOT approaches and current classifications; 2) surveying the MOT metrics and benchmark databases; 3) evaluating the MOT approaches frequently employed; 4) discussing the main challenges for MOT; and 5) putting forward potential directions for the development of future MOT approaches. By doing so, it strives to provide a systematic and comprehensive overview of existing MOT methods from SDE to TBA perspectives, thereby promoting further research into this emerging and important field.