  This paper takes a problem-oriented perspective and presents a comprehensive
review of transfer learning methods, both shallow and deep, for cross-dataset
visual recognition. Specifically, it categorises the cross-dataset recognition
into seventeen problems based on a set of carefully chosen data and label
attributes. Such a problem-oriented taxonomy has allowed us to examine how
different transfer learning approaches tackle each problem and how well each
problem has been researched to date. The comprehensive problem-oriented review
of the advances in transfer learning with respect to the problem has not only
revealed the challenges in transfer learning for visual recognition, but also
the problems (e.g. eight of the seventeen problems) that have been scarcely
studied. This survey not only presents an up-to-date technical review for
researchers, but also a systematic approach and a reference for a machine
learning practitioner to categorise a real problem and to look up for a
possible solution accordingly.
