Tracking of Extended Objects and Group Targets
Michael Feldmann, Dietrich Fränken, Wolfgang Koch · 2011
The task of tracking extended objects or (partly) un- resolvable group targets raises new challenges for both data asso- ciation and track maintenance. Due to limited sensor resolution capabilities, group targets (i.e., a number of closely spaced tar- gets moving in a coordinated fashion) may show a similar detec- tion pattern as extended objects, namely a varying number of de- tections whose spread is determined by both the statistical sensor errors as well as the physical extension of the group or extended object. In both cases, tracking and data association under the one target-one detection assumption are no longer applicable. This paper deals with the problem of maintaining a track for an ex- tended object or group target with varying number of detections. Herein,objectextensionisrepresentedbyasymmetricpositivedef- inite random matrix. A recently published Bayesian approach to tackling this problem is analyzed and discussed. From there, a new approach is derived that is expected to overcome some of the weak- nesses the mentioned Bayesian approach suffers from in certain applications.