# A Topology-Aware Spatiotemporal Handover Framework for Continuous Multi-UAV Tracking

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.15779 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.15779/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 11 of its 20 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 15 May 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 11 of 11)

- [You Only Look Once: Unified, Real-Time Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1506.02640/) (2015)
- [YOLOX: Exceeding YOLO Series in 2021](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.08430/) (2021)
- [ByteTrack: Multi-Object Tracking by Associating Every Detection Box](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.06864/) (2021)
- [DOTA: A Large-scale Dataset for Object Detection in Aerial Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.10398/) (2017)
- [Observation-Centric SORT: Rethinking SORT for Robust Multi-Object Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.14360/) (2022)
- [The highD Dataset: A Drone Dataset of Naturalistic Vehicle Trajectories on German Highways for Validation of Highly Automated Driving Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1810.05642/) (2018)
- [FastReID: A Pytorch Toolbox for General Instance Re-identification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.02631/) (2020)
- [CityFlow: A City-Scale Benchmark for Multi-Target Multi-Camera Vehicle Tracking and Re-Identification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.09254/) (2019)
- [Deep Cosine Metric Learning for Person Re-Identification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.00442/) (2018)
- [Multi-Target Multi-Camera Tracking of Vehicles using Metadata-Aided Re-ID and Trajectory-Based Camera Link Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.01213/) (2021)
- [Advanced computer vision for extracting georeferenced vehicle trajectories from drone imagery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.02136/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

The integration of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles(UAVs) into Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) offers synoptic visibility for traffic monitoring, yet scalable deployment is hindered by trajectory fragmentation, where vehicle identity persistence is lost across multi-UAV Fields of View (FOV). While state-of-the-art frameworks excel in optimizing local trajectory extraction and stability for single-drone imagery, they often function as isolated data silos that generate disjointed trajectories, thereby precluding network-level analysis such as Origin-Destination estimation. This paper presents a real-time Multi-Camera Multi-Vehicle Tracking (MCMT) system designed to handle global identity persistence. Addressing the visual ambiguity and computational cost of appearance-based Re-Identification (Re-ID) in nadir views, we introduce a lightweight Topology-Based Spatiotemporal Handover mechanism. We implement a high-throughput parallel pipeline leveraging YOLO11 and ByteTrack to process concurrent 4K streams. Our core contribution is a deterministic queue-based matching algorithm that utilizes geometric overlaps and virtual lane discretization to predictively manage identity handover via FIFO queues. Experimental results on complex urban environments, including intersections and merging traffic, demonstrate a Handover Success Rate (HOSR) of 99.8% in continuous traffic flows, significantly outperforming Re-ID baselines (74.1%) while validating edge deployment feasibility. The source code is available at https://github.com/JYe9/multi-camera-multi-vehicle-tracking-system.