AN INTRODUCTION TO MULTISENSOR DATA FUSION

Multisensor data fusion is an emerging technology applied to Departmen t of Defense (DoD) areas such as automated target recognition, battlef ield surveillance, adn guidance and control of autonomous vehicles, an d to non-DoD applications such as monitoring of complex machinery, med ical diagnosis, and smart buildings. Techniques for multisensor data f usion are drawn from a wide range of areas including artificial intell igence, pattern recognition, statistical estimation, and other areas. This paper provides a tutorial on data fusion, introducing data fusion applications, process models, and identification of applicable techni ques. Comments are made on the state-of-the-art in data fusion.