20 research outputs found
Stochastic methods for bayesian filtering and their applications to multicamera multitarget tracking
Ph.DDOCTOR OF PHILOSOPH
Localisation and tracking of people using distributed UWB sensors
In vielen Überwachungs- und Rettungsszenarien ist die Lokalisierung und Verfolgung von Personen in Innenräumen auf nichtkooperative Weise erforderlich. Für die Erkennung von Objekten durch Wände in kurzer bis mittlerer Entfernung, ist die Ultrabreitband (UWB) Radartechnologie aufgrund ihrer hohen zeitlichen Auflösung und Durchdringungsfähigkeit Erfolg versprechend. In dieser Arbeit wird ein Prozess vorgestellt, mit dem Personen in Innenräumen mittels UWB-Sensoren lokalisiert werden können. Er umfasst neben der Erfassung von Messdaten, Abstandschätzungen und dem Erkennen von Mehrfachzielen auch deren Ortung und Verfolgung. Aufgrund der schwachen Reflektion von Personen im Vergleich zum Rest der Umgebung, wird zur Personenerkennung zuerst eine Hintergrundsubtraktionsmethode verwendet. Danach wird eine konstante Falschalarmrate Methode zur Detektion und Abstandschätzung von Personen angewendet. Für Mehrfachziellokalisierung mit einem UWB-Sensor wird eine Assoziationsmethode entwickelt, um die Schätzungen des Zielabstandes den richtigen Zielen zuzuordnen. In Szenarien mit mehreren Zielen kann es vorkommen, dass ein näher zum Sensor positioniertes Ziel ein anderes abschattet. Ein Konzept für ein verteiltes UWB-Sensornetzwerk wird vorgestellt, in dem sich das Sichtfeld des Systems durch die Verwendung mehrerer Sensoren mit unterschiedlichen Blickfeldern erweitert lässt. Hierbei wurde ein Prototyp entwickelt, der durch Fusion von Sensordaten die Verfolgung von Mehrfachzielen in Echtzeit ermöglicht. Dabei spielen insbesondere auch Synchronisierungs- und Kooperationsaspekte eine entscheidende Rolle. Sensordaten können durch Zeitversatz und systematische Fehler gestört sein. Falschmessungen und Rauschen in den Messungen beeinflussen die Genauigkeit der Schätzergebnisse. Weitere Erkenntnisse über die Zielzustände können durch die Nutzung zeitlicher Informationen gewonnen werden. Ein Mehrfachzielverfolgungssystem wird auf der Grundlage des Wahrscheinlichkeitshypothesenfilters (Probability Hypothesis Density Filter) entwickelt, und die Unterschiede in der Systemleistung werden bezüglich der von den Sensoren ausgegebene Informationen, d.h. die Fusion von Ortungsinformationen und die Fusion von Abstandsinformationen, untersucht. Die Information, dass ein Ziel detektiert werden sollte, wenn es aufgrund von Abschattungen durch andere Ziele im Szenario nicht erkannt wurde, wird als dynamische Überdeckungswahrscheinlichkeit beschrieben. Die dynamische Überdeckungswahrscheinlichkeit wird in das Verfolgungssystem integriert, wodurch weniger Sensoren verwendet werden können, während gleichzeitig die Performanz des Schätzers in diesem Szenario verbessert wird. Bei der Methodenauswahl und -entwicklung wurde die Anforderung einer Echtzeitanwendung bei unbekannten Szenarien berücksichtigt. Jeder untersuchte Aspekt der Mehrpersonenlokalisierung wurde im Rahmen dieser Arbeit mit Hilfe von Simulationen und Messungen in einer realistischen Umgebung mit UWB Sensoren verifiziert.Indoor localisation and tracking of people in non-cooperative manner is important in many surveillance and rescue applications. Ultra wideband (UWB) radar technology is promising for through-wall detection of objects in short to medium distances due to its high temporal resolution and penetration capability. This thesis tackles the problem of localisation of people in indoor scenarios using UWB sensors. It follows the process from measurement acquisition, multiple target detection and range estimation to multiple target localisation and tracking. Due to the weak reflection of people compared to the rest of the environment, a background subtraction method is initially used for the detection of people. Subsequently, a constant false alarm rate method is applied for detection and range estimation of multiple persons. For multiple target localisation using a single UWB sensor, an association method is developed to assign target range estimates to the correct targets. In the presence of multiple targets it can happen that targets closer to the sensor induce shadowing over the environment hindering the detection of other targets. A concept for a distributed UWB sensor network is presented aiming at extending the field of view of the system by using several sensors with different fields of view. A real-time operational prototype has been developed taking into consideration sensor cooperation and synchronisation aspects, as well as fusion of the information provided by all sensors. Sensor data may be erroneous due to sensor bias and time offset. Incorrect measurements and measurement noise influence the accuracy of the estimation results. Additional insight of the targets states can be gained by exploiting temporal information. A multiple person tracking framework is developed based on the probability hypothesis density filter, and the differences in system performance are highlighted with respect to the information provided by the sensors i.e. location information fusion vs range information fusion. The information that a target should have been detected when it is not due to shadowing induced by other targets is described as dynamic occlusion probability. The dynamic occlusion probability is incorporated into the tracking framework, allowing fewer sensors to be used while improving the tracker performance in the scenario. The method selection and development has taken into consideration real-time application requirements for unknown scenarios at every step. Each investigated aspect of multiple person localization within the scope of this thesis has been verified using simulations and measurements in a realistic environment using M-sequence UWB sensors
Estimation and control of multi-object systems with high-fidenlity sensor models: A labelled random finite set approach
Principled and novel multi-object tracking algorithms are proposed, that have the ability to optimally process realistic sensor data, by accommodating complex observational phenomena such as merged measurements and extended targets. Additionally, a sensor control scheme based on a tractable, information theoretic objective is proposed, the goal of which is to optimise tracking performance in multi-object scenarios. The concept of labelled random finite sets is adopted in the development of these new techniques
Exploring space situational awareness using neuromorphic event-based cameras
The orbits around earth are a limited natural resource and one that hosts a vast range of vital space-based systems that support international systems use by both commercial industries, civil organisations, and national defence. The availability of this space resource is rapidly depleting due to the ever-growing presence of space debris and rampant overcrowding, especially in the limited and highly desirable slots in geosynchronous orbit. The field of Space Situational Awareness encompasses tasks aimed at mitigating these hazards to on-orbit systems through the monitoring of satellite traffic. Essential to this task is the collection of accurate and timely observation data. This thesis explores the use of a novel sensor paradigm to optically collect and process sensor data to enhance and improve space situational awareness tasks. Solving this issue is critical to ensure that we can continue to utilise the space environment in a sustainable way. However, these tasks pose significant engineering challenges that involve the detection and characterisation of faint, highly distant, and high-speed targets. Recent advances in neuromorphic engineering have led to the availability of high-quality neuromorphic event-based cameras that provide a promising alternative to the conventional cameras used in space imaging. These cameras offer the potential to improve the capabilities of existing space tracking systems and have been shown to detect and track satellites or ‘Resident Space Objects’ at low data rates, high temporal resolutions, and in conditions typically unsuitable for conventional optical cameras. This thesis presents a thorough exploration of neuromorphic event-based cameras for space situational awareness tasks and establishes a rigorous foundation for event-based space imaging. The work conducted in this project demonstrates how to enable event-based space imaging systems that serve the goals of space situational awareness by providing accurate and timely information on the space domain. By developing and implementing event-based processing techniques, the asynchronous operation, high temporal resolution, and dynamic range of these novel sensors are leveraged to provide low latency target acquisition and rapid reaction to challenging satellite tracking scenarios. The algorithms and experiments developed in this thesis successfully study the properties and trade-offs of event-based space imaging and provide comparisons with traditional observing methods and conventional frame-based sensors. The outcomes of this thesis demonstrate the viability of event-based cameras for use in tracking and space imaging tasks and therefore contribute to the growing efforts of the international space situational awareness community and the development of the event-based technology in astronomy and space science applications
Novel data association methods for online multiple human tracking
PhD ThesisVideo-based multiple human tracking has played a crucial role in many applications
such as intelligent video surveillance, human behavior analysis, and
health-care systems. The detection based tracking framework has become
the dominant paradigm in this research eld, and the major task is to accurately
perform the data association between detections across the frames.
However, online multiple human tracking, which merely relies on the detections
given up to the present time for the data association, becomes more
challenging with noisy detections, missed detections, and occlusions. To
address these challenging problems, there are three novel data association
methods for online multiple human tracking are presented in this thesis,
which are online group-structured dictionary learning, enhanced detection
reliability and multi-level cooperative fusion.
The rst proposed method aims to address the noisy detections and
occlusions. In this method, sequential Monte Carlo probability hypothesis
density (SMC-PHD) ltering is the core element for accomplishing the
tracking task, where the measurements are produced by the detection based
tracking framework. To enhance the measurement model, a novel adaptive
gating strategy is developed to aid the classi cation of measurements. In
addition, online group-structured dictionary learning with a maximum voting
method is proposed to estimate robustly the target birth intensity. It
enables the new-born targets in the tracking process to be accurately initialized
from noisy sensor measurements. To improve the adaptability of the
group-structured dictionary to target appearance changes, the simultaneous
codeword optimization (SimCO) algorithm is employed for the dictionary
update.
The second proposed method relates to accurate measurement selection
of detections, which is further to re ne the noisy detections prior to the tracking
pipeline. In order to achieve more reliable measurements in the Gaussian
mixture (GM)-PHD ltering process, a global-to-local enhanced con dence
rescoring strategy is proposed by exploiting the classi cation power of a mask
region-convolutional neural network (R-CNN). Then, an improved pruning
algorithm namely soft-aggregated non-maximal suppression (Soft-ANMS) is
devised to further enhance the selection step. In addition, to avoid the misuse
of ambiguous measurements in the tracking process, person re-identi cation
(ReID) features driven by convolutional neural networks (CNNs) are integrated
to model the target appearances.
The third proposed method focuses on addressing the issues of missed
detections and occlusions. This method integrates two human detectors
with di erent characteristics (full-body and body-parts) in the GM-PHD
lter, and investigates their complementary bene ts for tracking multiple
targets. For each detector domain, a novel discriminative correlation matching
(DCM) model for integration in the feature-level fusion is proposed, and
together with spatio-temporal information is used to reduce the ambiguous
identity associations in the GM-PHD lter. Moreover, a robust fusion
center is proposed within the decision-level fusion to mitigate the sensitivity
of missed detections in the fusion process, thereby improving the fusion
performance and tracking consistency.
The e ectiveness of these proposed methods are investigated using the
MOTChallenge benchmark, which is a framework for the standardized evaluation
of multiple object tracking methods. Detailed evaluations on challenging
video datasets, as well as comparisons with recent state-of-the-art
techniques, con rm the improved multiple human tracking performance
Moving target detection in multi-static GNSS-based passive radar based on multi-Bernoulli filter
Over the past few years, the global navigation satellite system (GNSS)-based passive radar (GBPR) has attracted more and more attention and has developed very quickly. However, the low power level of GNSS signal limits its application. To enhance the ability of moving target detection, a multi-static GBPR (MsGBPR) system is considered in this paper, and a modified iterated-corrector multi-Bernoulli (ICMB) filter is also proposed. The likelihood ratio model of the MsGBPR with range-Doppler map is first presented. Then, a signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) online estimation method is proposed, which can estimate the fluctuating and unknown map SNR effectively. After that, a modified ICMB filter and its sequential Monte Carlo (SMC) implementation are proposed, which can update all measurements from multi-transmitters in the optimum order (ascending order). Moreover, based on the proposed method, a moving target detecting framework using MsGBPR data is also presented. Finally, performance of the proposed method is demonstrated by numerical simulations and preliminary experimental results, and it is shown that the position and velocity of the moving target can be estimated accuratel