# TOPIC: A Parallel Association Paradigm for Multi-Object Tracking under Complex Motions and Diverse Scenes

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2308.11157 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.11157/

## Key facts

- Cited by 21 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 50 of its 87 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 22 Aug 2023.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 50)

- [Adam: A Method for Stochastic Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1412.6980/) (2014)
- [Scalability in Perception for Autonomous Driving: Waymo Open Dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.04838/) (2019)
- [YOLOX: Exceeding YOLO Series in 2021](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.08430/) (2021)
- [Simple Online and Realtime Tracking with a Deep Association Metric](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.07402/) (2017)
- [Simple Online and Realtime Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1602.00763/) (2016)
- [ByteTrack: Multi-Object Tracking by Associating Every Detection Box](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.06864/) (2021)
- [Performance Measures and a Data Set for Multi-Target, Multi-Camera Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1609.01775/) (2016)
- [HOTA: A Higher Order Metric for Evaluating Multi-Object Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.07736/) (2020)
- [MOT16: A Benchmark for Multi-Object Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1603.00831/) (2016)
- [TrackFormer: Multi-Object Tracking with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.02702/) (2021)
- [FairMOT: On the Fairness of Detection and Re-Identification in Multiple Object Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.01888/) (2020)
- [Tracking Objects as Points](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.01177/) (2020)
- [Deep Layer Aggregation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1707.06484/) (2017)
- [YouTube-VOS: A Large-Scale Video Object Segmentation Benchmark](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1809.03327/) (2018)
- [MOTR: End-to-End Multiple-Object Tracking with Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.03247/) (2021)
- [TransTrack: Multiple Object Tracking with Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.15460/) (2020)
- [MOT20: A benchmark for multi object tracking in crowded scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.09003/) (2020)
- [Observation-Centric SORT: Rethinking SORT for Robust Multi-Object Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.14360/) (2022)
- [Towards Real-Time Multi-Object Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.12605/) (2019)
- [MOTS: Multi-Object Tracking and Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1902.03604/) (2019)
- [Quasi-Dense Similarity Learning for Multiple Object Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.06664/) (2020)
- [DanceTrack: Multi-Object Tracking in Uniform Appearance and Diverse Motion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.14690/) (2021)
- [Multiple Object Tracking: A Literature Review](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1409.7618/) (2014)
- [FastReID: A Pytorch Toolbox for General Instance Re-identification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.02631/) (2020)
- [Track to Detect and Segment: An Online Multi-Object Tracker](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.08808/) (2021)
- [MOTChallenge 2015: Towards a Benchmark for Multi-Target Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1504.01942/) (2015)
- [Learning to Track with Object Permanence](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.14258/) (2021)
- [Chained-Tracker: Chaining Paired Attentive Regression Results for End-to-End Joint Multiple-Object Detection and Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.14557/) (2020)
- [MeMOT: Multi-Object Tracking with Memory](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.16761/) (2022)
- [Global Tracking Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.13250/) (2022)

## Built on by (most cited first, 21 of 21)

- [FeatureSORT: Essential Features for Effective Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.04249/) (2024)
- [CAMELTrack: Context-Aware Multi-cue ExpLoitation for Online Multi-Object Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.01257/) (2025)
- [FastTracker: Real-Time and Accurate Visual Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.14370/) (2025)
- [OmniTrack++: Omnidirectional Multi-Object Tracking by Learning Large-FoV Trajectory Feedback](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.00510/) (2025)
- [NOOUGAT: Towards Unified Online and Offline Multi-Object Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.02111/) (2025)
- [History-Aware Transformation of ReID Features for Multiple Object Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.12562/) (2025)
- [When Trackers Date Fish: A Benchmark and Framework for Underwater Multiple Fish Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.06400/) (2025)
- [DepTR-MOT: Unveiling the Potential of Depth-Informed Trajectory Refinement for Multi-Object Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.17323/) (2025)
- [Offline-Poly: A Polyhedral Framework For Offline 3D Multi-Object Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.13772/) (2026)
- [EPIPTrack: Rethinking Prompt Modeling with Explicit and Implicit Prompts for Multi-Object Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.13235/) (2025)
- [SMTrack: End-to-End Trained Spiking Neural Networks for Multi-Object Tracking in RGB Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.14607/) (2025)
- [DMSORT: An efficient parallel maritime multi-object tracking architecture for unmanned vessel platforms](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.04128/) (2025)
- [Infrared UAV Target Tracking with Dynamic Feature Refinement and Global Contextual Attention Knowledge Distillation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.04581/) (2025)
- [Learning Association via Track-Detection Matching for Multi-Object Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.22105/) (2025)
- [Motion-Driven Multi-Object Tracking of Model Organisms in Space Science Experiments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.26321/) (2026)
- [GateMOT: Q-Gated Attention for Dense Object Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.26353/) (2026)
- [SAMOFT: Robust Multi-Object Tracking via Region and Flow](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.09417/) (2026)
- [FEMOT: Multi-Object Tracking using Frame and Event Cameras](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.14094/) (2026)
- [WaspMOT: A Benchmark for Long-Term Multi-Object Tracking of Trichogramma Wasps](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.08729/) (2026)
- [VLA-ReID: Video-Level Association for Re-Identification in Multi-Object Tracking with Highly Similar Objects](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.17157/) (2026)
- [Revisiting Multi-Object Tracking Baselines: Hyperparameter Optimization with Multi-Fidelity Greedy Coordinate Search](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.12261/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Video data and algorithms have been driving advances in multi-object tracking (MOT). While existing MOT datasets focus on occlusion and appearance similarity, complex motion patterns are widespread yet overlooked. To address this issue, we introduce a new dataset called BEE24 to highlight complex motions. Identity association algorithms have long been the focus of MOT research. Existing trackers can be categorized into two association paradigms: single-feature paradigm (based on either motion or appearance feature) and serial paradigm (one feature serves as secondary while the other is primary). However, these paradigms are incapable of fully utilizing different features. In this paper, we propose a parallel paradigm and present the Two rOund Parallel matchIng meChanism (TOPIC) to implement it. The TOPIC leverages both motion and appearance features and can adaptively select the preferable one as the assignment metric based on motion level. Moreover, we provide an Attention-based Appearance Reconstruction Module (AARM) to reconstruct appearance feature embeddings, thus enhancing the representation of appearance features. Comprehensive experiments show that our approach achieves state-of-the-art performance on four public datasets and BEE24. Moreover, BEE24 challenges existing trackers to track multiple similar-appearing small objects with complex motions over long periods, which is critical in real-world applications such as beekeeping and drone swarm surveillance. Notably, our proposed parallel paradigm surpasses the performance of existing association paradigms by a large margin, e.g., reducing false negatives by 6% to 81% compared to the single-feature association paradigm. The introduced dataset and association paradigm in this work offer a fresh perspective for advancing the MOT field. The source code and dataset are available at https://github.com/holmescao/TOPICTrack.