  Cross-correlator plays a significant role in many visual perception tasks,
such as object detection and tracking. Beyond the linear cross-correlator, this
paper proposes a kernel cross-correlator (KCC) that breaks traditional
limitations. First, by introducing the kernel trick, the KCC extends the linear
cross-correlation to non-linear space, which is more robust to signal noises
and distortions. Second, the connection to the existing works shows that KCC
provides a unified solution for correlation filters. Third, KCC is applicable
to any kernel function and is not limited to circulant structure on training
data, thus it is able to predict affine transformations with customized
properties. Last, by leveraging the fast Fourier transform (FFT), KCC
eliminates direct calculation of kernel vectors, thus achieves better
performance yet still with a reasonable computational cost. Comprehensive
experiments on visual tracking and human activity recognition using wearable
devices demonstrate its robustness, flexibility, and efficiency. The source
codes of both experiments are released at https://github.com/wang-chen/KCC
