Random set based methods have provided a rigorous Bayesian framework and have been used extensively in the last decade for point object estimation. In this paper, we emphasize that the same methodology offers an equally powerful approach to estimation of so called extended objects, i.e., objects that result in multiple detections on the sensor side. Building upon the analogy between Bayesian state estimation of a single object and random finite set estimation for multiple objects, we give a tutorial on random set methods with an emphasis on multiple extended object estimation. The capabilities are illustrated on a simple yet insightful real life example with laser range data containing several occlusions.CADICSCUA

Granström, Karl

Gustafsson, Fredrik

Lundquist, Christian

Orguner, Umut

English

Davies, Richard T.

Duke Law Scholarship Repository

THE AMERICAN COMMITMENT TO PUBLICPROPAGANDARIcHAR T. DAviEs*I have been involved for the past twenty years in the practice of Americandiplomacy. Five of those years have been spent working closely with, or in, theAmerican foreign information program. Despite this, the subject I have beenassigned seems to me to embody a question. My immediate reaction is to assumethat I must prove an American commitment to propaganda, that this is not some-thing we can take for granted, like the American commitment to the right to privateproperty or to baseball as the national sport. That that should be so is hardly strangeto those who have lived through the history of the postwar years. But it is a measureof the tentativeness many still feel when they think about this commitment.Our country itself is peculiarly a creation of propagandists. The inspired pam-phleteers who fanned the flames of revolution in America went on to proclaim theirbeliefs in a Declaration evoked by "a decent respect to the opinions of mankind,"and then proceeded to "form a more perfect Union." These were men of the pen,publicists of the highest sort, who advanced their ends by public argument in debateswhich produced great state documents.We believed, for over 170 years, that it was but necessary to say these thingsamong ourselves, to be ourselves a beacon unto the world, and that, beyond ourshores, men would see, understand, and of their own volition repair to the banner wehad unfurled.America, the exemplar, the avatar, of freedom, we thought, would draw men'sminds, hearts, and hopes like a magnet and, by being itself, would work greatchanges in the world.And, of course, it has done so and continues to do so.But that something more was needed, except during the emergency conditions ofwartime, was a concept foreign to American minds before 1945. Like so many newideas, the view that the American Government should maintain a permanent organi-zation devoted to telling the rest of mankind about the United States had a painfulbirth, a wretched childhood, and a stormy adolescence. If we now regard it ascoming into man's estate, we do so with understandable caution.Yet it is as dear, I think, as these things can well be that the United Statesis now quite thoroughly committed to speaking officially to the rest of the worldabout itself, about problems of common concern to it and other nations, and aboutits dreams, fears, and hopes for the future.* A.B. 1942, Columbia College. Assistant Director (Soviet Union and Eastern Europe), U.S. Informa-tion Agency.AMERICAN PUBLIC PROPAGANDAORIGINS OF THE UNITED STATES COMMITM[ENTA great deal has been said and written about the "cold war" as the major causewhich gave rise to the United States commitment to a foreign propaganda program,and there is no doubt that, on a narrow reading of the evidence, it is quite correctso to present the matter. I should like here, however, to direct some remarks towardsbroadening this traditional framework of thinking about our official propagandaeffort.The United States and the Soviet Union emerged from the Second World Waras the two superpowers. The international order had been shattered during the warand the seven or eight states which, before the war, could be considered "greatpowers," had undergone a sharp and radical reordering of stature. Since the twopostwar superpowers possessed totally different philosophies of government andtotally different ideas about the nature of international relations and, consequently,about their relationships to each other and to third states, a struggle between the two,each surrounded by its allies, was inevitable. Under these circumstances, an im-portant part of that larger struggle was bound to be the "struggle for men's minds,"to use the phrase of which we heard more ten years ago than we do today.The Soviet Government may, with great justice, claim to have originated modernmass psychologico-political warfare, when Trotsky, at Brest-Litovsk, insisted uponpublicizing each day's transactions, thus attempting to appeal over the head of theGerman Government to the German people and, more particularly, to the rank-and-file of the German army. Its subsequent concentration upon propagandaabroad made it the leader in this field. Confronted with so practiced an adversary,the United States was bound to react and itself to establish an organization for theconduct of propaganda abroad.Thus, as is the case with so many other political, economic, and diplomaticphenomena of the postwar period, the "cold war" was the father of the United Statesforeign-propaganda effort. At the same time, historians of the subject point quitecorrectly to the spread of the media of mass communications, and particularly radio,during the inter-war period, as greatly facilitating this development. But to saythat much, and say no more, is to explain only the immediate impulse and the timingof the initiation of the American peacetime commitment to propaganda abroad andto ignore the fact that, sooner or later, we should have made such a commitment,whether there had ever been a "cold war" or not. The "cold war" was instrumentalin producing the commitment, but not decisive. The decisive factor was our emer-gence as a world power. Indeed, the moment when, I should say, it was first quiteclear we should sooner or later embark on an overseas information program wasrather the end of the First World War than of the Second.A world power, such as we already were in the i92os and 1930s, simply cannotLAw AND CONTEMPORARY PROBLEMSoperate in the modern world without informing the peoples of other nations of whatit is doing about matters of common international interest, and why. In fact, wewere then doing so, in however crude and rudimentary a form, without adequaterecognition of that fact. The issuance of press releases by the Department of State,which dates from 1922, and the inception in 1929 of press briefings by the Secretaryof State or a press spokesman of the Department, were two clear symptoms of ourmovement in this direction. And, of course, private American efforts abroad, ofan informational and cultural character, were already of long standing when theSecond World War began. They found their clearest expression in the Americanuniversities and teachers in the Near East and China.This is neither the place nor time to delve in detail into all the evidence I thinkexists to support the thesis that, during the 192os and i93os, we were moving surely,however slowly, towards the basic commitment to overseas propaganda which wenow have.If we view our foreign-propaganda effort in these terms, we can see that the "coldwar" was a catalyst which greatly hastened the involvement of the United Statesgovernment in organized propaganda abroad but which led us to view its goalsand modes in a peculiar light, not necessarily the one which would have illuminatedthem if it had been the product of an evolutionary development. If we compare thedevelopment of America's effort with that of such an older great power as GreatBritain, we can see that evolutionary growth of a foreign-propaganda apparatus inwhat we may regard as a more normal sequence. Practices and institutions developedat a relatively unhurried pace. The Foreign Office devised ways and means ofcommunicating British views to the world through the institution of the privilegedpress briefing and through the quasi-official mechanisms of The Times and Reuters.The BBC early began to broadcast abroad because of the desirability of linking themetropole by radio with the outposts of empire. Abroad, it was the normal functionof British diplomats to brief the local British correspondent. And, in time, too, theconcept of the British Council grew up to deal with a longer-range type of informa-tional and cultural activity.I suggest, therefore, that, following the shock of forced growth of the Americanpropaganda system evoked by the "cold war," we are now gradually resuming thedevelopment of what we should in any case have had: a nucleus of official informa-tional, cultural, and educational activities, around which there lies a whole range ofprivate American activities, from education and scientific research to the dissemina-tion of American television programs.IITi MODES OF THE UNITED STATEs COMMITMENTIf we recognize, then, that, as the result of a process of development which hastaken place in all states of any significant power, the United States has quite naturallyAmEucAN PUBLIC PROPAGANDA 455developed a commitment to propaganda, that leaves us with a number of problems.The first of these is, what is propaganda?A narrow definition of the term would conform to that which I gather fromthe literature distributed by the organizers of this symposium would most nearlycorrespond to what they have in mind. That is to say, propaganda is here treatedessentially as informational, commentary, and feature materials dealing with thesubstance of international affairs, with the activities of the originating country thatbear upon its relations with other states, and with the activities of other countries inthe sphere of their relations with other states.A broad definition would recognize the significance of materials and activitiesoutside and apart from the narrow range of international relations. It wouldembrace cultural relations, relations between educational institutions, relationsbetween scientists and technicians, relations between institutions and persons in thefield of the creative and performing arts, and a whole panorama of activities, which,in this country, are the province of nongovernmental organizations but which haveeither a potential or an actual significance for America's relations with other countries.It is quite clear that it is towards the broad, rather than the narrow, definitionthat our development in this field is tending. President Johnson's speech of Sep-tember i6, 1965, at the Smithsonian Institution was a significant signpost pointing inthis direction and the International Education and Health bills introduced into theCongress at the beginning of February 1966 represent a major new effort to imple-ment this concept.Now, it may seem misleading, or even harmful, to say that international cultural,educational, and artistic activities are "propaganda." But, if we use the word in itsaltogether neutral sense, as connoting the spreading of information, it is clear thatthey are, and the best kind of propaganda at that. In discussing the process ofcommunication, Edward R. Murrow used to describe the thousands of miles aninstruction had to travel from Washington to an American diplomatic post overseasbefore it could be delivered by an American official to an official of the localForeign Ministry, and he stressed that the most crucial portion of its journey werethe last six feet, from the lips of the American diplomat to the ears of the foreignofficial. There is no more effective medium of communication than face-to-facecontact, and, increasingly, we, and the other states interested in influencing theopinions of others, have been turning to it and will increasingly do so in thefuture.The need which moves us in the direction of broadening the concept of propa-ganda to include many forms of international communication not hitherto usuallythought of under that title, arises from the increasing interpenetration of human so-cieties. It is generally accepted that science is international, and so, increasingly, areart, literature, economics, sociology, technology, and medicine. There is scarcely afield in which we cannot learn something from other nations and they cannot learn456 LAw AND CONTEMPORARY PROBLEMSsomething from us. In that process, we inevitably learn something about othernations, and they learn something about us. It is this process, and its expansion,to which we are increasingly committed.A second problem arising from the United States commitment to propaganda is,what is its proper content? Here, we can try an answer in two dimensions: thefirst, narrow, the second, broad.Narrowly considered, the problem of content is bounded by two primary criteria.The first is credibility. In an open society, it is quite impossible for an officialpropaganda organization to make believe that certain things do not exist and, in itsoutput, to ignore them. The domestic commercial media and the large residentcorps of foreign correspondents, subject to no constraints, will surely report thosethings, regardless of what the official organization does, or does not do, about them.So that, all other considerations quite apart, the official organization is compelledto deal with them if it wishes its audience abroad to rely upon it for accuracy, speed,and comprehensiveness in the treatment of news. And if the audience does notregard the official medium as credible, its sponsors might as well save themselves thetime, trouble, and money of maintaining it.The second criterion is accuracy of reflection of national policy. It is a charac-teristic of a free press that it thrives on criticism and conflict. The American pressquite correctly prides itself upon fulfilling, to a very substantial extent, the roleof a loyal opposition and of a constant critic of government at all levels. This is asit should be.But if one of USIA's media-the Voice of America, let us say-were to restrictitself simply to parroting the headlines and leading articles of the American press,it would, on some issues, convey to its foreign audience a distorted impression whichhighlighted only those aspects of the event headlined in the press and ignored muchof the context in which it occurred. It thus becomes a function of the Voice ofAmerica to place the news in context, to report, first of all, the facts of rioting in theWatts district of Los Angeles, then to try to explain why the Watts rioting occurred,and finally to place this event and its causes within the context of the evolution ofAmerican society and the changing relationship of the American Negro to his fellowAmericans. It would be misleading if any of these elements of the story werereported without the others.Looked at in the broad aspect, the problem of content is a good deal simpler.It rests upon the fact that Americans, whatever their occupations or interests, are goingto be themselves. By and large, we are interested in other people, in their reactionsto us and to our country, and are anxious to help them understand us. The for-eigner who visits this country goes away, not with too little information or too fewimpressions upon which to form a judgment about it, but with the opposite difficulty,that of trying to bring some order into a mass of information and a welter of im-pressions.AmERcAN PUBLIC PROPAGANDA 457The third problem is, what are we trying to achieve through our commitmentto propaganda?It is easy to be at once too modest and too demanding in our views of what canbe achieved by propaganda. On the one hand, we can never measure with clinicalprecision the effect of this or that aspect of our effort and decide accordingly to addan hour of broadcast time in this language and take away an hour in that, to dis-continue this publication and commence one of a different type, in order to achievea calculated effect upon the audiences in question. This does not mean, however,that the effect of our efforts cannot be gauged, however roughly, by experiencedpropagandists. On the other hand, we should not hope to change the shape of theworld through propaganda. We can hope to change attitudes, but attitudes are notsynonymous with actions. Actions more often result from immediate physical andsocial stimuli than from appeals from abroad, however cleverly conceived.In the narrow sense, our propaganda should convey to the rest of the world anaccurate picture of what we are doing in the United States, why we are doing it,and what we hope to achieve thereby.In the broad sense, we are attempting to impart to the world some of the lessonswe have learned in coping with problems of increasing complexity in the mostadvanced of the developed countries. We are attempting to make our experience,in coping with our problems, relevant to those which other societies confront or willconfront as they themselves develop.We have a peculiar responsibility in this. Together with all the people of theworld, we are moving at an ever-increasing pace into realms of social and economicdevelopment never before entered by man. We must solve problems of a magnitudeunimaginable only twenty, or even ten, years ago. At the same time, we helpother nations to profit by what we learn in doing this, just as we ourselves, through-out our history, have built upon the experience and accumulated wisdom of others.CONCLUSIONI began by saying that the subject assigned me, the American commitment topublic propaganda, seemed still to embody a question. And, of course, it does.The question is not whether the United States is committed to propaganda abroad.It is, and it must be. The question is whether we will deal successfully with thetask. This task is not one which government can or should monopolize. It is onein which we should draw upon the whole range of our resources, using them all inproper proportion and balance. Finally, it is one to the solution of which we willall make a contribution, simply by virtue of the fact that we are citizens of America.What we do and how we do it cannot fail to interest the rest of the world. Behindthe propaganda of the word is that of the deed. Neither is sufficient by itself.Together, right deeds and right words are the only effective propaganda.

The American Commitment to Public Propoganda

Random set-based methods have provided a rigorous Bayesian framework and have been used extensively in the last decade for point object estimation. In this article, we emphasize that the same methodology offers an equally powerful approach to estimation of so-called extended objects, i.e., objects that result in multiple detections on the sensor side. Building upon the analogy between Bayesian state estimation of a single object and random finite set (RFS) estimation for multiple objects, we give a tutorial on random set methods with an emphasis on multiple-extended-object estimation. The capabilities are illustrated on a simple yet insightful real-life example with laser range data containing several occlusions

Granstrom, Karl

OpenMETU (Middle East Technical University)

IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine

Random Set Methods Estimation of Multiple Extended Objects

Digitala Vetenskapliga Arkivet - Academic Archive On-line

Random Set Methods : Estimation of Multiple Extended Objects

Random set based methods have provided a rigorous Bayesian framework and have been used extensively in the last decade for point object estimation. In this paper, we emphasize that the same methodology offers an equally powerful approach to estimation of so called extended objects, i.e., objects that result in multiple detections on the sensor side. Building upon the analogy between Bayesian state estimation of a single object and random finite set estimation for multiple objects, we give a tutorial on random set methods with an emphasis on multiple extended object estimation. The capabilities are illustrated on a simple yet insightful real life example with laser range data containing several occlusions

Karl Granström

Christian Lundquist

Fredrik Gustafsson

Umut Orguner

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Random Set Methods: Estimation of Multiple Extended  Objects

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Karl Granstrom

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Random Set Methods: Estimation of Multiple Extended Objects

Academic Archive On-line (Linköping University, Sweden)

Random set based methods have provided a rigorous Bayesian framework and have been used extensively in the last decade for point object estimation. In this paper, we emphasize that the same methodology offers an equally powerful approach to estimation of so called extended objects, i.e., objects that result in multiple detections on the sensor side. Building upon the analogy between Bayesian state estimation of a single object and random finite set estimation for multiple objects, we give a tutorial on random set methods with an emphasis on multiple extended object estimation. The capabilities are illustrated on a simple yet insightful real life example with laser range data containing several occlusions.</p

Granström, Karl,

Lundquist, Christian,

Gustafsson, Fredrik,

Orguner, Umut,

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Random Set Methods [Elektronisk resurs] : Estimation of Multiple Extended Objects

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The American Commitment to Public Propoganda

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