Can multiple single object trackers be used to get a multiple object tracker? if it is feasible, would it give a better performance than existing Multiple object trackers.
2 Answers
Answer to the first question: Yes. Answer to the second question: Yes & No.
You can use multiple single object trackers(MSOT) however, since they would be independent from each other, they may not be able to take advantage of certain things. On the other hand, multiple object trackers(MOT) explicitly make use of "all" known object positions simultaneously.
For example; in MSOT, two separate objects might be assigned same spatial position even though it's impossible because those two trackers don't communicate with each other. However, a MOT algorithm would make sure that at any given time only one object can occupy a certain spatial location.
To sum up: If you are sure that the objects would never occlude each other, using MSOT would work. However, if that assumption is not valid, then you need to go for MOT algorithms.
SOT tracks the object from the beginning of a video sequence where the object's position in the first frame is known to the tracker, however in MOT, objects may vanish or re-enter, and new objects may appear, which requires detection.
In MOT, the number of objects is not known to the tracker, so if you use MSOT, the computation cost would rise dramatically when the number goes up compared to MOT methods, which is not acceptable in some real and crowded scenes.
