Hierarchical information fusion object recognition system and method

US5963653A · kind A · utility

Assignee

• Raytheon Company · US

Inventors

• Charles A. McNary · Calabasas, US
• Kurt Reiser · Offenbach am Main, DE
• David Doria · Lakewood, US
• David Webster · Maidenhead, GB
• Yang-Ming Chen · Taipei, TW

Key dates

• Filing date: Jun 19, 1997
• Grant date: Oct 5, 1999
• Expiry date: Jun 19, 2017

Classification

• Technology area (CPC G): Physics
• CPC primary: G06V10/255
• WIPO field: Measurement
• WIPO sector: Instruments

Abstract

A hierarchical object recognition method for aggregation, interpretation and classification of information from multiple sensor sources on the detection feature attribute level. The system extracts information derived from each sensor source to obtain detections and their feature attributes. At least two processing streams, one for each sensor source, are provided for converting the detections and their feature attributes into hypotheses on identity and class of detected objects. The detections are shared and combined between the two processing streams using hierarchical information fusion algorithms to determine which ones of the hypotheses on identity and class of detected objects have sufficient probabilities for classifying the information.