Full Text Available

Note: Clicking the button above will open the full text document at the original institutional repository in a new window.

Development of a test suite for single object tracking algorithms in video

Flying Camera Solutions (FlyCam), within Sony Lund's startup accelerator, intends to provide drone videography to paying customers in ski resorts: a customer should be able to go about their activity as usual while a drone films them. Visual object tracking, enabling the drone to track the customer...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Donnelly, Kieran
Other Authors: Pienaar, Etienne
Format: Thesis
Language:English
Published: Department of Statistical Sciences 2021
Subjects:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1867613295089811456
access_status_str Open Access
author Donnelly, Kieran
author2 Pienaar, Etienne
author_browse Donnelly, Kieran
Pienaar, Etienne
author_facet Pienaar, Etienne
Donnelly, Kieran
author_sort Donnelly, Kieran
collection Thesis
description Flying Camera Solutions (FlyCam), within Sony Lund's startup accelerator, intends to provide drone videography to paying customers in ski resorts: a customer should be able to go about their activity as usual while a drone films them. Visual object tracking, enabling the drone to track the customer throughout the activity, is a primary obstacle in creating a viable autonomous videography service. FlyCam needs an object tracking algorithm which is accurate, robust, real-time, and requiring minimal computational overhead. We propose two innovations to aid in the selection of an appropriate tracking algorithm. Firstly, a video annotation algorithm, making use of an object detector to record the position and type of object in each frame of a video clip. Secondly, an algorithm designed to evaluate the performance of any given object tracker based on a set of performance metrics. These metrics include, among others, measures of positional accuracy, frame rate, and false positive rate. For the video annotation algorithm we implemented the state-of-the-art Mask R-CNN object detector, which achieved an average frame rate of 1.5 fps annotating video clips in up to 4K resolution. Another algorithm then played back the annotated clips to the user such that incorrect object detections could be rooted out or rectified. With little relevant annotated video available, the annotation algorithm proved useful in preparing a suite of 18 clips to be evaluated. Ten performance metrics were adapted from multi-object to single-object tracking. Nine tracking algorithms were then run on each of the 18 test video clips at varying resolutions to produce 375 tracking observations for analysis. The evaluation results revealed the optimal tracking algorithm to be Re3: a recurrent-convolutional neural network tracker which runs at respectable speeds on a consumer laptop. This is a promising result; with enough annotated data, neural networks can be retrained to improve performance. Within just a few months of operation, FlyCam could amass enough specific video data to significantly improve the neural network-based tracker.
format Thesis
id oai:open.uct.ac.za:11427/33645
institution University of Cape Town (South Africa)
language eng
last_indexed 2026-06-10T12:33:51.607Z
license_str Not specified — see source repository
provenance_str_mv Harvested via OAI-PMH from UCTD — University of Cape Town Open Access Repository
publishDate 2021
publishDateRange 2021
publishDateSort 2021
publisher Department of Statistical Sciences
publisherStr Department of Statistical Sciences
record_format dspace
source_str UCTD — University of Cape Town Open Access Repository
spelling oai:open.uct.ac.za:11427/33645 Development of a test suite for single object tracking algorithms in video Donnelly, Kieran Pienaar, Etienne statistical sciences Flying Camera Solutions (FlyCam), within Sony Lund's startup accelerator, intends to provide drone videography to paying customers in ski resorts: a customer should be able to go about their activity as usual while a drone films them. Visual object tracking, enabling the drone to track the customer throughout the activity, is a primary obstacle in creating a viable autonomous videography service. FlyCam needs an object tracking algorithm which is accurate, robust, real-time, and requiring minimal computational overhead. We propose two innovations to aid in the selection of an appropriate tracking algorithm. Firstly, a video annotation algorithm, making use of an object detector to record the position and type of object in each frame of a video clip. Secondly, an algorithm designed to evaluate the performance of any given object tracker based on a set of performance metrics. These metrics include, among others, measures of positional accuracy, frame rate, and false positive rate. For the video annotation algorithm we implemented the state-of-the-art Mask R-CNN object detector, which achieved an average frame rate of 1.5 fps annotating video clips in up to 4K resolution. Another algorithm then played back the annotated clips to the user such that incorrect object detections could be rooted out or rectified. With little relevant annotated video available, the annotation algorithm proved useful in preparing a suite of 18 clips to be evaluated. Ten performance metrics were adapted from multi-object to single-object tracking. Nine tracking algorithms were then run on each of the 18 test video clips at varying resolutions to produce 375 tracking observations for analysis. The evaluation results revealed the optimal tracking algorithm to be Re3: a recurrent-convolutional neural network tracker which runs at respectable speeds on a consumer laptop. This is a promising result; with enough annotated data, neural networks can be retrained to improve performance. Within just a few months of operation, FlyCam could amass enough specific video data to significantly improve the neural network-based tracker. 2021-07-26T11:52:50Z 2021-07-26T11:52:50Z 2021 2021-07-26T11:52:06Z Master Thesis Masters MSc http://hdl.handle.net/11427/33645 eng application/pdf Department of Statistical Sciences Faculty of Science
spellingShingle statistical sciences
Donnelly, Kieran
Development of a test suite for single object tracking algorithms in video
thesis_degree_str Master's
title Development of a test suite for single object tracking algorithms in video
title_full Development of a test suite for single object tracking algorithms in video
title_fullStr Development of a test suite for single object tracking algorithms in video
title_full_unstemmed Development of a test suite for single object tracking algorithms in video
title_short Development of a test suite for single object tracking algorithms in video
title_sort development of a test suite for single object tracking algorithms in video
topic statistical sciences
url http://hdl.handle.net/11427/33645
work_keys_str_mv AT donnellykieran developmentofatestsuiteforsingleobjecttrackingalgorithmsinvideo