GNN-PMB: A Simple but Effective Online 3D Multi-Object Tracker without Bells and Whistles

Multi-object tracking (MOT) is among crucial applications in modern advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) and autonomous driving (AD) systems. Most solutions to MOT are based on random vector Bayesian filters like global nearest neighbor (GNN) plus rule-based heuristical track maintenance. With the development of random finite set (RFS) theory, the RFS Bayesian filters have been applied in MOT tasks for ADAS and AD systems recently. However, their usefulness in the real traffic is open to doubt due to computational cost and implementation complexity. In this paper, it is revealed that GNN with rule-based heuristic track maintenance is insufficient for LiDAR-based MOT tasks in ADAS and AD systems. This judgement is illustrated by systematically comparing several different multi-point object filter-based tracking frameworks, including traditional random vector Bayesian filters with rule-based heuristical track maintenance and RFS Bayesian filters. Moreover, a simple and effective tracker, namely Poisson multi-Bernoulli filter using global nearest neighbor (GNN-PMB) tracker, is proposed for LiDAR-based MOT tasks. The proposed GNN-PMB tracker achieves competitive results in nuScenes test dataset, and shows superior tracking performance over other state-of-the-art LiDAR only trackers and LiDAR and camera fusion-based trackers.