Improved target tracking with road network information

In this paper we consider the problem of tracking targets, which can move both on-road and off-road, with particle filters utilizing the road-network information. It is argued that the constraints like speed-limits and/or one-way roads generally incorporated into on-road motion models make it necessary to consider additional high-bandwidth off-road motion models. This is true even if the targets under consideration are only allowed to move on-road due to the possibility of imperfect road-map information and drivers violating the traffic rules. The particle filters currently used struggles during sharp mode transitions, with poor estimation quality as a result. This is due to the fact the number of particles allocated to each motion mode is varying according to the mode probabilities. A recently proposed interacting multiple model (IMM) particle filtering algorithm, which keeps the number of particles in each mode constant irrespective of the mode probabilities, is applied to this problem and its performance is compared to a previously existing algorithm. The results of the simulations on a challenging bearing-only tracking scenario show that the proposed algorithm, unlike the previously existing algorithm, can achieve good performance even under the sharpest mode transitions.