A Performance Metric for Multiple Target Tracking with Temporal Dimension Specifics

With the great development of multi-target tracking (MTT) technologies, many MTT algorithms have been proposed with their own advantages and disadvantages. Due to the fact that requirements to MTT algorithms vary from the application scenarios, a metric is significant to select an appropriate MTT algorithm for the specific application scenario. In this paper, we proposed a metric on the trajectory sets with temporal dimension specifics to compare the estimated trajectories with the true trajectories. The proposed metric evaluates the estimate results of an MTT algorithm in terms of tracking accuracy, continuity and clarity. Furthermore, the metric computation is based on a multi-dimensional assignment problem, which is formulated as a computable form using linear programming. To enhance the influence of recent estimated states of the trajectories in the metric, an attention function is used to reweighted the trajectory errors at different time steps. Finally, simulation results show that the proposed metric is able to evaluate many aspects of the MTT algorithms. These evaluations are worthy for selecting suitable MTT algorithms in different application scenarios