Environmental representation for fused millimetre wave radar and nightvision data

This paper presents a method for the fusion of millimetre wave radar and nightvision sensors to generate an information-rich representation of the environment. The data from each of the sensors is divided into unstructured spatial objects according to the data available to that sensor. A hyperdimensional representation then constructed from these objects, with the observable characteristics providing the axes. This representation can then be provided to target extraction, classification and tracking algorithms to achieve advanced machine sensing and perception tasks. This differs significantly from the traditional approaches to this problem in which target identification is completed for each individual sensor and these estimates are then combined. The results of initial field trials are used to demonstrate the feasibility of this approach.