ByteDance: ByteTrack

ByteTrack is a multi-object tracking algorithm developed by ByteDance, released in October 2021. It addresses a core limitation of earlier tracking methods by associating every detection box — not just high-confidence ones — with tracklets using a two-stage matching process. Low-score detection boxes, which typically correspond to occluded or blurry objects, are retained in a secondary matching step against unmatched tracklets, significantly reducing the number of lost tracks.

ByteTrack achieves strong performance on the MOT17 and MOT20 benchmarks at the time of release, operating in real time on standard GPU hardware. It is architecture-agnostic and can be paired with any object detector, making it straightforward to integrate into existing detection pipelines for video analytics, surveillance, and sports tracking applications.