Efficient approximations of the multi-sensor labelled multi-Bernoulli filter

TL;DR

This paper introduces two efficient, parallelizable approximations of the multi-sensor labelled multi-Bernoulli filter, suitable for real-time multi-object tracking with multiple sensors, balancing computational efficiency and accuracy.

Contribution

The paper presents two novel approximate multi-sensor LMB filters that enable parallel measurement updates and reduce computational complexity compared to existing methods.

Findings

Both filters operate with constant complexity in the number of sensors.

The filters show minimal accuracy loss compared to the IC-LMB filter in simulations.

The geometric average fusion filter works under non-linear conditions, unlike the direct manipulation filter.

Abstract

In this paper, we propose two efficient, approximate formulations of the multi-sensor labelled multi-Bernoulli (LMB) filter, which both allow the sensors' measurement updates to be computed in parallel. Our first filter is based on the direct mathematical manipulation of the multi-sensor, multi-object Bayes filter's posterior distribution. Unfortunately, it requires the division of probability distributions and its extension beyond linear Gaussian applications is not obvious. Our second filter is based on geometric average fusion and it approximates the multi-sensor, multi-object Bayes filter's posterior distribution using the geometric average of each sensor's measurement-updated distribution. This filter can be used under non-linear conditions; however, it is not as accurate as our first filter. In both cases, we approximate the LMB filter's measurement update using an existing loopy belief propagation algorithm. Both filters have a constant complexity in the number of sensors, and linear complexity in both number of measurements and objects. This is an improvement on an iterated-corrector LMB (IC-LMB) filter, which has linear complexity in the number of sensors. The proposed filters are of interest when tracking many objects using several sensors, where filter run-time is more important than filter accuracy. We evaluate both filters' performances on simulated data and the results indicate that the filters' loss of accuracy compared to the IC-LMB filter is not significant.