CrowdMOT: Crowdsourcing Strategies for Tracking Multiple Objects in Videos

Abstract: Crowdsourcing is a valuable approach for tracking objects in videos in a more scalable manner than possible with domain experts. However, existing frameworks do not produce high quality results with non-expert crowdworkers, especially for scenarios where objects split. To address this shortcoming, we introduce a crowdsourcing platform called CrowdMOT, and investigate two micro-task design decisions: (1) whether to decompose the task so that each worker is in charge of annotating all objects in a sub-segment of the video versus annotating a single object across the entire video, and (2) whether to show annotations from previous workers to the next individuals working on the task. We conduct experiments on a diversity of videos which show both familiar objects (aka - people) and unfamiliar objects (aka - cells). Our results highlight strategies for efficiently collecting higher quality annotations than observed when using strategies employed by today's state-of-art crowdsourcing system.