# Occlusion-Aware SORT: Observing Occlusion for Robust Multi-Object Tracking

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.06034 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.06034/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 50 of its 72 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 6 Mar 2026.

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

- [Attention Is All You Need](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.03762/) (2017)
- [Feature Pyramid Networks for Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.03144/) (2016)
- [YOLOX: Exceeding YOLO Series in 2021](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.08430/) (2021)
- [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)
- [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)
- [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)
- [RMPE: Regional Multi-person Pose Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.00137/) (2016)
- [BoT-SORT: Robust Associations Multi-Pedestrian Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.14651/) (2022)
- [Towards Real-Time Multi-Object Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.12605/) (2019)
- [DanceTrack: Multi-Object Tracking in Uniform Appearance and Diverse Motion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.14690/) (2021)
- [UnitBox: An Advanced Object Detection Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1608.01471/) (2016)
- [AlphaPose: Whole-Body Regional Multi-Person Pose Estimation and Tracking in Real-Time](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.03375/) (2022)
- [Person Re-identification: Past, Present and Future](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1610.02984/) (2016)
- [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)
- [Deep OC-SORT: Multi-Pedestrian Tracking by Adaptive Re-Identification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.11813/) (2023)
- [SportsMOT: A Large Multi-Object Tracking Dataset in Multiple Sports Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.05170/) (2023)
- [Rethinking the competition between detection and ReID in Multi-Object Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.12138/) (2020)
- [TransMOT: Spatial-Temporal Graph Transformer for Multiple Object Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.00194/) (2021)
- [MeMOTR: Long-Term Memory-Augmented Transformer for Multi-Object Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.15700/) (2023)
- [Monocular Quasi-Dense 3D Object Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.07351/) (2021)
- [Hybrid-SORT: Weak Cues Matter for Online Multi-Object Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.00783/) (2023)
- [Hard to Track Objects with Irregular Motions and Similar Appearances? Make It Easier by Buffering the Matching Space](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.14317/) (2022)

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

- [DOA-SORT: Directional Occlusion-Aware Multi-Object Tracking with Distributional Observations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.22706/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Multi-object tracking (MOT) involves analyzing object trajectories and counting the number of objects in video sequences. However, 2D MOT faces challenges due to positional cost confusion arising from partial occlusion. To address this issue, we present the novel Occlusion-Aware SORT (OA-SORT) framework, a plug-and-play and training-free framework that includes the Occlusion-Aware Module (OAM), the Occlusion-Aware Offset (OAO), and the Bias-Aware Momentum (BAM). Specifically, OAM analyzes the occlusion status of objects, where a Gaussian Map (GM) is introduced to reduce background influence. In contrast, OAO and BAM leverage the OAM-described occlusion status to mitigate cost confusion and suppress estimation instability. Comprehensive evaluations on the DanceTrack, SportsMOT, and MOT17 datasets demonstrate the importance of occlusion handling in MOT. On the DanceTrack test set, OA-SORT achieves 63.1% and 64.2% in HOTA and IDF1, respectively. Furthermore, integrating the Occlusion-Aware framework into the four additional trackers improves HOTA and IDF1 by an average of 2.08% and 3.05%, demonstrating the reusability of the occlusion awareness.