SpikeTrack: High-performance and Energy-efficient Event-Based Object Tracking with Spiking Neural Network

Event cameras have attracted considerable attention for object tracking due to their microsecond-level temporal resolution and wide dynamic range, yet effectively harnessing spiking neural networks (SNNs) in this domain remains challenging. In this paper, we introduce SpikeTrack, a purely spike-driven framework for single-object tracking that addresses the shortcomings of RGB-based approaches in fast-motion or target appearance change. Central to SpikeTrack is the Multi-Search-sequence-and-Single-Template (MSST) training paradigm, which captures rich temporal dependencies, alongside a Dynamic Integer Leaky Integrate-and-Fire (DI-LIF) neuron that adaptively predicts integer-valued activations based on the input features during training and converts them into spikes during inference. Our design preserves the intrinsic sparsity and fine-grained spatiotemporal acuity of event data, resulting in efficient energy consumption without sacrificing performance. Extensive evaluations on FE108, FELT, and VisEvent demonstrate that SpikeTrack exceeds the performance of state-of-the-art trackers in both accuracy and efficiency. Furthermore, ablation studies validate each module’s contribution, highlighting the practical potential of spike-driven architectures for future vision applications.