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Acta Aeronautica et Astronautica Sinica ›› 2026, Vol. 47 ›› Issue (4): 331967.doi: 10.7527/S1000-6893.2025.31967

• Electronics and Electrical Engineering and Control • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Multi-object feature association in UAV videos: Recent progress and perspectives

Han WU1,2, Hao SUN1,2, Kui LIU1,2, Kefeng JI1,2(), Gangyao KUANG1,2   

  1. 1.College of Electronic Science and Technology,National University of Defense Technology,Changsha 410073,China
    2.State Key Laboratory of Complex Electromagnetic Environment Effects on Electronics and Information System,National University of Defense Technology,Changsha 410073,China
  • Received:2025-03-12 Revised:2025-03-29 Accepted:2025-05-28 Online:2025-06-10 Published:2025-06-06
  • Contact: Kefeng JI E-mail:jikefeng@nudt.edu.cn
  • Supported by:
    National Natural Science Foundation of China(61971426)

Abstract:

Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) videos have become essential sources of information in both civilian and military domains, including intelligent surveillance, smart cities, situational awareness, low-altitude economy and military reconnaissance. Multi-object feature association in UAV videos aims to continuously predict target positions and maintain the identity of each target, serving as the foundation for tasks such as multi-object tracking. However, existing reviews predominantly focus on UAV object detection and tracking, lacking a systematic review for multi-object feature association in UAV videos. This paper provides the first systematic review of the research progress on multi-object feature association in UAV videos. First, existing methods are summarized and categorized based on application scenarios and data source characteristics, which covers multi-view and multi-spectral feature association approaches for the first time. Then, the representative algorithms are analyzed in depth, including their strengths, limitations, and applicable scenarios. In addition, mainstream public datasets used in this research field are summarized, including single-view, multi-view, and multi-spectral UAV video datasets. Representative datasets such as VisDrone, MDMT, and VT-Tiny-MOT are selected to evaluate and compare existing methods, with the purpose of analyzing the root causes of the performance differences among existing methods and laying the foundation for subsequent studies. Finally, the paper highlights the key challenges that remain in UAV multi-object feature association and discusses future research directions, particularly in the areas of foundation model development and multi-modal deep fusion. This review aims to provide valuable insights for advancing research in this field.

Key words: UAV videos, feature association, multi-object tracking, multi-view videos, multi-spectral videos

CLC Number: