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People Tracking with UWB Radar Using a Multiple-Hypothesis Tracking of Clusters (MHTC) Method

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Abstract

This paper presents a method to track multiple moving humans using Ultra-Wideband (UWB) radar. UWB radar can complement other human tracking technologies, as it works well in poor visibility conditions. Our tracking approach is based on a point process interpretation of the multi-path UWB radar scattering model for moving humans. Based on this model, we present a multiple hypothesis tracking (MHT) framework for tracking the ranges and velocities of a variable number of moving human targets. The multi-target tracking (MTT) problem for UWB radar differs from traditional applications because of the complex multipath scattering observations per target. We develop an MHT framework for UWB radar-based multiple human target tracking, which can simultaneously solve the complex observation clustering and data association problems using Bayesian inference. We present experimental results in which a monostatic UWB radar tracks both individual and multiple human targets to estimate target ranges and velocities, even with changing numbers of targets across radar scans.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA

    SangHyun Chang, Rangoli Sharan & Joel W. Burdick

  2. Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA, USA

    Michael Wolf

  3. DENSO CORPORATION, Aichi, Japan

    Naoki Mitsumoto

Authors
  1. SangHyun Chang
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  2. Rangoli Sharan
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  3. Michael Wolf
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  4. Naoki Mitsumoto
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  5. Joel W. Burdick
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to SangHyun Chang.

Additional information

The authors greatly appreciate the financial support of this work provided by the DENSO CORP., Aichi, Japan, the LIG Nex1 Corporation, Yongin, Korea, and the Agency for Defense Development (ADD), Seoul, Korea.

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Chang, S., Sharan, R., Wolf, M. et al. People Tracking with UWB Radar Using a Multiple-Hypothesis Tracking of Clusters (MHTC) Method. Int J of Soc Robotics 2, 3–18 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12369-009-0039-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12369-009-0039-x

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