# MVTD: A Benchmark Dataset for Maritime Visual Object Tracking

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.02866 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.02866/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 46 of its 80 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 3 Jun 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 46)

- [Fully-Convolutional Siamese Networks for Object Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1606.09549/) (2016)
- [GOT-10k: A Large High-Diversity Benchmark for Generic Object Tracking in the Wild](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1810.11981/) (2018)
- [LaSOT: A High-quality Benchmark for Large-scale Single Object Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1809.07845/) (2018)
- [FoundationPose: Unified 6D Pose Estimation and Tracking of Novel Objects](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.08344/) (2023)
- [Transformer Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.15436/) (2021)
- [Learning Spatio-Temporal Transformer for Visual Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.17154/) (2021)
- [Learning Discriminative Model Prediction for Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.07220/) (2019)
- [TrackingNet: A Large-Scale Dataset and Benchmark for Object Tracking in the Wild](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.10794/) (2018)
- [Joint Feature Learning and Relation Modeling for Tracking: A One-Stream Framework](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.11991/) (2022)
- [ATOM: Accurate Tracking by Overlap Maximization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1811.07628/) (2018)
- [Fast Online Object Tracking and Segmentation: A Unifying Approach](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.05050/) (2018)
- [Probabilistic Regression for Visual Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.12565/) (2020)
- [Transformer Meets Tracker: Exploiting Temporal Context for Robust Visual Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.11681/) (2021)
- [Ocean: Object-aware Anchor-free Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.10721/) (2020)
- [Learning Multi-Domain Convolutional Neural Networks for Visual Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1510.07945/) (2015)
- [Siamese Box Adaptive Network for Visual Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.06761/) (2020)
- [Need for Speed: A Benchmark for Higher Frame Rate Object Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.05884/) (2017)
- [AiATrack: Attention in Attention for Transformer Visual Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.09603/) (2022)
- [LaSOT: A High-quality Large-scale Single Object Tracking Benchmark](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.03465/) (2020)
- [ODTrack: Online Dense Temporal Token Learning for Visual Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.01686/) (2024)
- [Towards More Flexible and Accurate Object Tracking with Natural Language: Algorithms and Benchmark](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.16746/) (2021)
- [Backbone is All Your Need: A Simplified Architecture for Visual Object Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.05328/) (2022)
- [Transforming Model Prediction for Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.11192/) (2022)
- [Generalized Relation Modeling for Transformer Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.16580/) (2023)
- [Autoregressive Queries for Adaptive Tracking with Spatio-TemporalTransformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.10574/) (2024)
- [HIPTrack: Visual Tracking with Historical Prompts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.02072/) (2023)
- [Learn to Match: Automatic Matching Network Design for Visual Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.00803/) (2021)
- [SeaDronesSee: A Maritime Benchmark for Detecting Humans in Open Water](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.01922/) (2021)
- [Siamese Instance Search for Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1605.05863/) (2016)
- [ARTrackV2: Prompting Autoregressive Tracker Where to Look and How to Describe](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.17133/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [MUOT_3M: A 3 Million Frame Multimodal Underwater Benchmark and the MUTrack Tracking Method](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.18006/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Visual Object Tracking (VOT) is a fundamental task with widespread applications in autonomous navigation, surveillance, and maritime robotics. Despite significant advances in generic object tracking, maritime environments continue to present unique challenges, including specular water reflections, low-contrast targets, dynamically changing backgrounds, and frequent occlusions. These complexities significantly degrade the performance of state-of-the-art tracking algorithms, highlighting the need for domain-specific datasets. To address this gap, we introduce the Maritime Visual Tracking Dataset (MVTD), a comprehensive and publicly available benchmark specifically designed for maritime VOT. MVTD comprises 182 high-resolution video sequences, totaling approximately 150,000 frames, and includes four representative object classes: boat, ship, sailboat, and unmanned surface vehicle (USV). The dataset captures a diverse range of operational conditions and maritime scenarios, reflecting the real-world complexities of maritime environments. We evaluated 14 recent SOTA tracking algorithms on the MVTD benchmark and observed substantial performance degradation compared to their performance on general-purpose datasets. However, when fine-tuned on MVTD, these models demonstrate significant performance gains, underscoring the effectiveness of domain adaptation and the importance of transfer learning in specialized tracking contexts. The MVTD dataset fills a critical gap in the visual tracking community by providing a realistic and challenging benchmark for maritime scenarios. Dataset and Source Code can be accessed here "https://github.com/AhsanBaidar/MVTD".