Amirali K. Gostar

Xiaoying Wang, Reza Hoseinnezhad, Amirali K. Gostar et al.

Sensor management in multi-object stochastic systems is a theoretically and computationally challenging problem. This paper presents a novel approach to the multi-target multi-sensor control problem within the partially observed Markov decision process (POMDP) framework. We model the multi-object state as a labeled multi-Bernoulli random finite set (RFS), and use the labeled multi-Bernoulli filter in conjunction with minimizing a task-driven control objective function: posterior expected error of cardinality and state (PEECS). A major contribution is a guided search for multi-dimensional optimization in the multi-sensor control command space, using coordinate descent method. In conjunction with the Generalized Covariance Intersection method for multi-sensor fusion, a fast multi-sensor algorithm is achieved. Numerical studies are presented in several scenarios where numerous controllable (mobile) sensors track multiple moving targets with different levels of observability. The results show that our method works significantly faster than the approach taken by a state of art method, with similar tracking errors.

Amirali K. Gostar, Reza Hoseinnezhad, Alireza Bab-Hadiashar

The recently developed labeled multi-Bernoulli (LMB) filter uses better approximations in its update step, compared to the unlabeled multi-Bernoulli filters, and more importantly, it provides us with not only the estimates for the number of targets and their states, but also with labels for existing tracks. This paper presents a novel sensor-control method to be used for optimal multi-target tracking within the LMB filter. The proposed method uses a task-driven cost function in which both the state estimation errors and cardinality estimation errors are taken into consideration. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed method can successfully guide a mobile sensor in a challenging multi-target tracking scenario.

Xiaoying Wang, Reza Hoseinnezhad, Amirali K. Gostar et al.

This paper presents a novel statistical information fusion method to integrate multiple-view sensor data in multi-object tracking applications. The proposed method overcomes the drawbacks of the commonly used Generalized Covariance Intersection method, which considers constant weights allocated for sensors. Our method is based on enhancing the Generalized Covariance Intersection with adaptive weights that are automatically tuned based on the amount of information carried by the measurements from each sensor. To quantify information content, Cauchy-Schwarz divergence is used. Another distinguished characteristic of our method lies in the usage of the Labeled Multi-Bernoulli filter for multi-object tracking, in which the weight of each sensor can be separately adapted for each Bernoulli component of the filter. The results of numerical experiments show that our proposed method can successfully integrate information provided by multiple sensors with different fields of view. In such scenarios, our method significantly outperforms the state of art in terms of inclusion of all existing objects and tracking accuracy.

Amirali K. Gostar, Reza Hoseinnezhad, Alireza Bab-Hadiashar

A novel sensor control solution is presented, formulated within a Multi-Bernoulli-based multi-target tracking framework. The proposed method is especially designed for the general multi-target tracking case, where no prior knowledge of the clutter distribution or the probability of detection profile are available. In an information theoretic approach, our method makes use of Rènyi divergence as the reward function to be maximized for finding the optimal sensor control command at each step. We devise a Monte Carlo sampling method for computation of the reward. Simulation results demonstrate successful performance of the proposed method in a challenging scenario involving five targets maneuvering in a relatively uncertain space with unknown distance-dependent clutter rate and probability of detection.

Amirali K. Gostar, Reza Hoseinnezhad, Alireza Bab-Hadiashar

This paper presents a sensor-control method for choosing the best next state of the sensor(s), that provide(s) accurate estimation results in a multi-target tracking application. The proposed solution is formulated for a multi-Bernoulli filter and works via minimization of a new estimation error-based cost function. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed method can outperform the state-of-the-art methods in terms of computation time and robustness to clutter while delivering similar accuracy.