Object Tracking in Satellite Videos Based on Correlation Filter with Multi-Feature Fusion and Motion Trajectory Compensation

As a new type of earth observation satellite approach, video satellites can continuously monitor an area of the Earth and acquire dynamic and abundant information by utilizing video imaging. Hence, video satellites can afford to track various objects of interest on the Earth's surface. Inspired by the capabilities of video satellites, this paper presents a novel method to track fast-moving objects in satellite videos based on the kernelized correlation filter (KCF) embedded with multi-feature fusion and motion trajectory compensation. The contributions of the suggested algorithm are multifold. First, a multi-feature fusion strategy is proposed to describe an object comprehensively, which is challenging for the single-feature approach. Second, a subpixel positioning method is developed to calculate the object’s position and overcome the poor tracking accuracy difficulties caused by inaccurate object localization. Third, introducing an adaptive Kalman filter (AKF) enables compensation and correction of the KCF tracker results and reduces the object’s bounding box drift, solving the moving object occlusion problem. Based on the correlation filtering tracking framework, combined with the above improvement strategies, our algorithm improves the tracking accuracy by at least 17% on average and the success rate by at least 18% on average compared to the KCF algorithm. Hence, our method effectively solves poor object tracking accuracy caused by complex backgrounds and object occlusion. The experimental results utilize satellite videos from the Jilin-1 satellite constellation and highlight the proposed algorithm's appealing tracking results against current state-of-the-art trackers regarding success rate, precision, and robustness metrics.