Link-Clustering Techniques for Group Dismount Tracking

Detection and tracking of dismounts in foliage is difficult due to low target speed, foliage attenuation, small target RCS, internal clutter motion, forest animals, and target motion dynamics. The detection of individual dismounts reliably with reasonable false alarm rates will be extremely difficult in some circumstances and may require extended periods of observation. However if dismounts travel in groups, the structure and number in the group may be exploited to improve detectability and to derive additional tactically significant information. ALPHATECH proposes to develop link-clustering techniques which will improve identification and tracking of dismount groups by treating them as a group rather than as individuals. These techniques will identify and associate members of a group so that they may be separated from individuals and animals which do not belong to the group kinematically. In addition, we will extract tactically significant group features such as size, extent, structure, position and velocity which may be used by down stream processes or directly by war fighters to infer composition and intent.