Firstly, this paper points out the challenges faced by the design of multi-target tracking algorithms and the limitations of traditional methods. Secondly, a literature review and analysis of two types of algorithms are conducted: detection-based-tracking and joint-detection-tracking. Then, the commonly used evaluation indicators and publicly available datasets in the multi-object tracking algorithms were summarized, and the performance indicators of the two types of methods were analyzed. Finally, based on the current research status, the predictions and outlooks on the problems to be solved and the focuses of the future researches are made.