Generalized Labeled Multi-Bernoulli Approximation of Multi-Object Densities

In multi-object inference, the multi-object probability density captures the uncertainty in the number and the states of the objects as well as the statistical dependence between the objects. Exact computation of the multi-object density is generally intractable and tractable implementations usually...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Papi, Francesco, Ba-Ngu, V., Ba-Tuong, V., Fantacci, C., Beard, M.
Format: Journal Article
Published: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers 2015
Online Access:http://purl.org/au-research/grants/arc/DP130104404
http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/24520
Description
Summary:In multi-object inference, the multi-object probability density captures the uncertainty in the number and the states of the objects as well as the statistical dependence between the objects. Exact computation of the multi-object density is generally intractable and tractable implementations usually require statistical independence assumptions between objects. In this paper we propose a tractable multi-object density approximation that can capture statistical dependence between objects. In particular, we derive a tractable Generalized Labeled Multi-Bernoulli (GLMB) density that matches the cardinality distribution and the first moment of the labeled multi-object distribution of interest. It is also shown that the proposed approximation minimizes the Kullback-Leibler divergence over a special tractable class of GLMB densities. Based on the proposed GLMB approximation we further demonstrate a tractable multi-object tracking algorithm for generic measurement models. Simulation results for a multi-object Track-Before-Detect example using radar measurements in low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) scenarios verify the applicability of the proposed approach.