A Probabilistic Exclusion Principle for Tracking Multiple Objects

Tracking multiple targets whose models are indistinguishable is a challenging problem. Simply instantiating several independent I-body trackers is not an adequate solution, because the independent trackers can coalesce onto the best-fitting target. This paper presents an observation density for tracking which solves this problem by exhibiting a probabilistic exclusion principle. Exclusion arises naturally from a systematic derivation of the observation density, without relying on heuristics. Another important contribution of the paper is the presentation of partitioned sampling, a new sampling method for multiple object tracking. Partitioned sampling avoids the high computational load associated with fully coupled trackers, while retaining the desirable properties of coupling.

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