FastTuner: Fast Resolution and Model Tuning for Multi-Object Tracking in Edge Video Analytics

Multi-object tracking (MOT) is the “killer app” of edge video analytics. Deploying MOT pipelines for live video analytics poses a significant system challenge due to their computation-intensive nature. In this paper, we propose FastTuner, a model-agnostic framework that aims to accelerate MOT pipelines by adapting frame resolutions and backbone models. Unlike prior works that utilize a separate and time-consuming online profiling procedure to identify the optimal configuration, FastTuner incorporates multi-task learning to perform configuration selection and object tracking through a shared model. Multi-resolution training is employed to further improve the tracking accuracy across different resolutions. Furthermore, two workload placement schemes are designed for the practical deployment of FastTuner in edge video analytics systems. Extensive experiments demonstrate that FastTuner can achieve 1.1%–9.2% higher tracking accuracy and 2.5%–25.5% higher speed compared to the state-of-the-art methods, and accelerate end-to-end processing by 1.7%–22.5% in a real-world testbed consisting of an embedded device and an edge server.