Treat samples differently: Object tracking with semi-supervised online CovBoost

Most feature selection methods for object tracking assume that the labeled samples obtained in the next frames follow the similar distribution with the samples in the previous frame. However, this assumption is not true in some scenarios. As a result, the selected features are not suitable for tracking and the “drift” problem happens. In this paper, we consider data's distribution in tracking from a new perspective. We classify the samples into three categories: auxiliary samples (samples in the previous frames), target samples (collected in the current frame) and unlabeled samples (obtained in the next frame). To make the best use of them for tracking, we propose a novel semi-supervised transfer learning approach. Specifically, we assume only target samples follow the same distribution as the unlabeled samples and develop a novel semi-supervised CovBoost method. It could utilize auxiliary samples and unlabeled samples effectively when training the best strong classifier for tracking. Furthermore, we develop a new online updating algorithm for semi-supervised CovBoost, making our tracker handle with significant variations of the tracked target and background successfully. We demonstrate the excellent performance of the proposed tracker on several challenging test videos.