Fusing Uncertain and Heterogeneous Information Making Sense of the Battlefield

Today's decision analysts are faced with an ever-increasing amount of information from a large number of sensors and other data sets. Data fusion is a key component of this effort to integrate information from various data sources. In particular, one of the crucial aspects in battlefield operations concerns the development of continuous, unambiguous tracks on objects of interest in the surveillance area. Toyon Research Corporation proposes to research and design a system that integrates and fuses data from disparate sensors in order to aid command-level decisions, particularly by persistently tracking targets of interest. Toyon will develop stochastic methods for identifying decision points in the problem of integrating information through data fusion. In addition, advanced inference algorithms to integrate information will be developed and enhanced, based on Toyon"s previous work with its Fusion and Correlation for Tracked Object Retention (FACTOR) module, which has submodules for kinematic fusion and for inferencing algorithms.