Track-to-track association for intelligent vehicles by preserving local track geometry

Track-to-track association (T2TA) is a challenging task in situational awareness in intelligent vehicles and surveillance systems. In this paper, the problem of track-to-track association with sensor bias (T2TASB) is considered. Traditional T2TASB algorithms only consider a statistical distance cost between local tracks from different sensors, without exploiting the geometric relationship between one track and its neighboring ones from each sensor. However, the relative geometry among neighboring local tracks is usually stable, at least for a while, and thus helpful in improving the T2TASB. In this paper, we propose a probabilistic method, called the local track geometry preservation (LTGP) algorithm, which takes advantage of the geometry of tracks. Assuming that the local tracks of one sensor are represented by Gaussian mixture model (GMM) centroids, the corresponding local tracks of the other sensor are fitted to those of the first sensor. In this regard, a geometrical descriptor connectivity matrix is constructed to exploit the relative geometry of these tracks. The track association problem is formulated as a maximum likelihood estimation problem with a local track geometry constraint, and an expectation–maximization (EM) algorithm is developed to find the solution. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed methods offer better performance than the state-of-the-art methods.The authors gratefully acknowledge the Autonomous Vision Group for providing the KITTI dataset. The authors also would like to thank the editors and referees for the valuable comments and suggestions.The Research Funds of Chongqing Science and Technology Commission, the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the Key Project of Crossing and Emerging Area of CQUPT, the Research Fund of young-backbone university teacher in Chongqing province, Chongqing Overseas Scholars Innovation Program, Wenfeng Talents of Chongqing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Innovation Team Project of Chongqing Education Committee, the National Key Research and Development Program, the Research and Innovation of Chongqing Postgraduate Project, the Lilong Innovation and Entrepreneurship Fund of Chongqing University of Posts and Telecommunications.http://www.mdpi.com/journal/sensorsam2021Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineerin