# Continuous Marine Tracking via Autonomous UAV Handoff

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.12763 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.12763/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 8 of its 24 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 17 Jul 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 8 of 8)

- [Joint Feature Learning and Relation Modeling for Tracking: A One-Stream Framework](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.11991/) (2022)
- [MixFormer: End-to-End Tracking with Iterative Mixed Attention](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.11082/) (2022)
- [Track Anything: Segment Anything Meets Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.11968/) (2023)
- [AiATrack: Attention in Attention for Transformer Visual Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.09603/) (2022)
- [SiamAPN++: Siamese Attentional Aggregation Network for Real-Time UAV Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.08816/) (2021)
- [Image Matching Using SIFT, SURF, BRIEF and ORB: Performance Comparison for Distorted Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1710.02726/) (2017)
- [Zero-shot Shark Tracking and Biometrics from Aerial Imagery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.05717/) (2025)
- [SharkTrack: an accurate, generalisable software for streamlining shark and ray underwater video analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.20623/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

This paper introduces an autonomous UAV vision system for continuous, real-time tracking of marine animals, specifically sharks, in dynamic marine environments. The system integrates an onboard computer with a stabilised RGB-D camera and a custom-trained OSTrack pipeline, enabling visual identification under challenging lighting, occlusion, and sea-state conditions. A key innovation is the inter-UAV handoff protocol, which enables seamless transfer of tracking responsibilities between drones, extending operational coverage beyond single-drone battery limitations. Performance is evaluated on a curated shark dataset of 5,200 frames, achieving a tracking success rate of 81.9% during real-time flight control at 100 Hz, and robustness to occlusion, illumination variation, and background clutter. We present a seamless UAV handoff framework, where target transfer is attempted via high-confidence feature matching, achieving 82.9% target coverage. These results confirm the viability of coordinated UAV operations for extended marine tracking and lay the groundwork for scalable, autonomous monitoring.