The objective of this chapter is to present an approach for target track ing in cluttered environment, which incorporates the advanced concept of generalized data (kinematics and attribute) association (GDA) to improve track maintenance performance in complicated situations (closely spaced and/or crossing targets), when kinematics data are insufficient for correct decision making.
The objective of this chapter is to present and compare different fusion rules which can be used for Generalized Data Association (GDA) for multitarget tracking (MTT) in clutter.
This fifth volume on Advances and Applications of DSmT for Information Fusion collects theoretical and applied contributions of researchers working in different fields of applications and in mathematics, and is available in open-access. The collected contributions of this volume have either been published or presented after disseminating the fourth volume in 2015 (available at fs.unm.edu/DSmT-book4.pdf or www.onera.fr/sites/default/files/297/2015-DSmT-Book4.pdf) in international conferences, seminars, workshops and journals, or they are new. The contributions of each part of this volume are chronologically ordered. First Part of this book presents some theoretical advances on DSmT, dealing mainly with modified Proportional Conflict Redistribution Rules (PCR) of combination with degree of intersection, coarsening techniques, interval calculus for PCR thanks to set inversion via interval analysis (SIVIA), rough set classifiers, canonical decomposition of dichotomous belief functions, fast PCR fusion, fast inter-criteria analysis with PCR, and improved PCR5 and PCR6 rules preserving the (quasi-)neutrality of (quasi-)vacuous belief assignment in the fusion of sources of evidence with their Matlab codes. Because more applications of DSmT have emerged in the past years since the apparition of the fourth book of DSmT in 2015, the second part of this volume is about selected applications of DSmT mainly in building change detection, object recognition, quality of data association in tracking, perception in robotics, risk assessment for torrent protection and multi-criteria decision-making, multi-modal image fusion, coarsening techniques, recommender system, levee characterization and assessment, human heading perception, trust assessment, robotics, biometrics, failure detection, GPS systems, inter-criteria analysis, group decision, human activity recognition, storm prediction, data association for autonomous vehicles, identification of maritime vessels, fusion of support vector machines (SVM), Silx-Furtif RUST code library for information fusion including PCR rules, and network for ship classification. Finally, the third part presents interesting contributions related to belief functions in general published or presented along the years since 2015. These contributions are related with decision-making under uncertainty, belief approximations, probability transformations, new distances between belief functions, non-classical multi-criteria decision-making problems with belief functions, generalization of Bayes theorem, image processing, data association, entropy and cross-entropy measures, fuzzy evidence numbers, negator of belief mass, human activity recognition, information fusion for breast cancer therapy, imbalanced data classification, and hybrid techniques mixing deep learning with belief functions as well. We want to thank all the contributors of this fifth volume for their research works and their interests in the development of DSmT, and the belief functions. We are grateful as well to other colleagues for encouraging us to edit this fifth volume, and for sharing with us several ideas and for their questions and comments on DSmT through the years. We thank the International Society of Information Fusion (www.isif.org) for diffusing main research works related to information fusion (including DSmT) in the international fusion conferences series over the years. Florentin Smarandache is grateful to The University of New Mexico, U.S.A., that many times partially sponsored him to attend international conferences, workshops and seminars on Information Fusion. Jean Dezert is grateful to the Department of Information Processing and Systems (DTIS) of the French Aerospace Lab (Office National d’E´tudes et de Recherches Ae´rospatiales), Palaiseau, France, for encouraging him to carry on this research and for its financial support. Albena Tchamova is first of all grateful to Dr. Jean Dezert for the opportunity to be involved during more than 20 years to follow and share his smart and beautiful visions and ideas in the development of the powerful Dezert-Smarandache Theory for data fusion. She is also grateful to the Institute of Information and Communication Technologies, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, for sponsoring her to attend international conferences on Information Fusion.
Papers collected from researchers in fusion information, such as: Florentin Smarandache, Jean Dezert, Hongshe Dang, Chongzhao Han, Frederic Dambreville, Milan Daniel, Mohammad Khoshnevisan, Sukanto Bhattacharya, Albena Tchamova, Tzvetan Semerdjiev, Pavlina Konstantinova, Hongyan Sun, Mohammad Farooq, John J. Sudano, Samuel Corgne, Gregoire Mercier, Laurence Hubert-Moy, Anne-Laure Jousselme, Patrick Maupin and others on Dezert-Smarandache Theory of Plausible and Paradoxical Reasoning (DSmT).. The principal theories available until now for data fusion are the probability theory, the fuzzy set theory, the possibility theory, the hint theory and the theory of evidence. Since last two years J. Dezert and F. Smarandache are actively developing a new theory of plausible and paradoxical reasoning, called DSmT (acronym for Dezert-Smarandache Theory), for information fusion of uncertain and highly conflicting sources of information. The DSmT can be interpreted as a generalization of the Dempster-Shafer Theory (DST) but goes far beyond the DST. The free-DSmT model, which assumes that the ultimate refinement of the frame of discernment of the fusion problem is not accessible due to the intrinsic nature of its elements, is opposite to the Shafer's model (on which is based the DST) assuming the exhaustivity and exclusivity of all elements of the frame of discernment. The DSmT proposes a new theoretical framework for data fusion based on definition of hyper-power sets and a new simple commutative and associative rule of combination. Recently, it has been discovered, through a new DSm hybrid rule of combination, that DSmT can be also extended to problems involving hybrid-models (models including some exclusivity and/or non-existentially constraints). This new important theoretical result offers now to the DSmT a wider class of fusion applications and allows potentially to attack the next generation of complex dynamical/temporal fusion problems. DSmT can also provide a theoretical issue for the fusion of neutrosophic information (extension of fuzzy information proposed by F. Smarandache in nineties - see http://www.gallup.unm.edu/~smarandache/FirstNeutConf.htm for details about the neutrosophy logic and neutrosophy set theory).
For some time, all branches of the military have used a wide range of sensors to provide data for many purposes, including surveillance, reconnoitring, target detection and battle damage assessment. Many nations have also attempted to utilise these sensors for civilian applications, such as crop monitoring, agricultural disease tracking, environmental diagnostics, cartography, ocean temperature profiling, urban planning, and the characterisation of the Ozone Hole above Antarctica. The recent convergence of several important technologies has made possible new, advanced, high performance, sensor based applications relying on the near-simultaneous fusion of data from an ensemble of different types of sensors. The book examines the underlying principles of sensor operation and data fusion, the techniques and technologies that enable the process, including the operation of 'fusion engines'. Fundamental theory and the enabling technologies of data fusion are presented in a systematic and accessible manner. Applications are discussed in the areas of medicine, meteorology, BDA and targeting, transportation, cartography, the environment, agriculture, and manufacturing and process control.
The fourth volume on Advances and Applications of Dezert-Smarandache Theory (DSmT) for information fusion collects theoretical and applied contributions of researchers working in different fields of applications and in mathematics. The contributions have been published or presented after disseminating the third volume (2009, http://fs.gallup.unm.edu/DSmT-book3.pdf) in international conferences, seminars, workshops and journals.
The main purpose of this paper is to apply and to test the performance of a new method, based on belief functions, proposed by Dezert et al. in order to evaluate the quality of the individual association pairings provided in the optimal data association solution for improving the performances of multisensormultitarget tracking systems.
The fourth volume on Advances and Applications of Dezert-Smarandache Theory (DSmT) for information fusion collects theoretical and applied contributions of researchers working in different fields of applications and in mathematics. The contributions (see List of Articles published in this book, at the end of the volume) have been published or presented after disseminating the third volume (2009, http://fs.gallup.unm.edu/DSmT-book3.pdf) ininternational conferences, seminars, workshops and journals.
