Siamese Visual Object Tracking: A Survey

Object tracking belongs to active research areas in computer vision. We are interested in matching-based trackers exploiting deep machine learning known as Siamese trackers. Their powerful capabilities stem from similarity learning. This tracking paradigm is promising due to its inherent balance between performance and efficiency, so trackers of this type are suitable for real-time generic object tracking. There is an upsurge in research interest in Siamese trackers and the lack of available specialized surveys in this category. In this survey, we aim to identify and elaborate on the most significant challenges the Siamese trackers face. Our goal is to answer what design decisions the authors made and what problems they attempted to solve in the first place. We thus perform an in-depth analysis of the core principles on which Siamese trackers operate with a discussion of incentives behind them. Besides, we provide an up-to-date qualitative and quantitative comparison of the prominent Siamese trackers on established benchmarks. Among other things, we discuss current trends in developing Siamese trackers. Our survey could help absorb the details about the underlying principles of Siamese trackers and the challenges they face.