Extension-Deformation Approach to Extended Object Tracking

This article presents a new approach, named extension-deformation approach (EDA), to extended object tracking (EOT). It models the extension of an object as being deformed from a simple reference extension by moving several control points. Then, a complex object extension can be characterized by these control points given the reference extension. This greatly simplifies the problem of shape description. Thus, modeling and estimation of the extension reduce to those of the control points, which are treated as state components of the extension. A noiseless measurement is a point on the deformed extension that corresponds to a source on the reference extension. Once the source is given, the corresponding measurement model is linear in the state, making state estimation simple and direct. However, the source is unknown and hard to estimate accurately. To handle this problem, a multiple-source approach to kinematic state and extension estimation is proposed. Overall the proposed approach is simple and it can effectively track an object with an extension that can be nonstar-convex. Simulation results are given to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.