Global-patch-hybrid template-based arbitrary object tracking with integral channel features

Arbitrary object tracking is a challenging task in computer vision, as many factors affecting the target representation must be considered. A target template based on only the global appearance or on only the local appearance is unable to capture the discriminating information required for the robust performance of a tracker. In this paper, the target appearance is represented using a hybrid of global and local appearances along with a framework to exploit the Integral Channel Features (ICF). The proposed hybrid approach achieves fusion of the conventional global and patch-based approaches for target representation to synergize the advantages of both approaches. The ICF approach under the hybrid approach integrates heterogeneous sources of information of the target and provides feature strength to the hybrid template. The use of ICF also expedites the extraction of the structural and color features from video frames as the features are collected over multiple channels. The target appearance representation is updated based on only samples with appearances similar to the target appearance using clustering and vector quantization. These factors offer the proposed algorithm robustness to occlusion, illumination changes, and in-plane rotation. Further experimentation analyzes the effects of a change in the scale of the bounding box on the tracking performance of the proposed algorithm. The proposed approach outperforms all the state-of-the-art algorithms in all considered scenarios.