Maneuvering target tracking with 3D variable turn model and kinematic constraint

Abstract

In this paper, research on estimation of the states of Target Of Interest using fixed-wing Unmanned Aerial Vehicle(UAV) for surveillance, intercept, tracking and assessment purposes is performed. States that are of interest vary according to the user's needs. In this research, the target position, velocity, and acceleration are chosen to be the states of interests. Unmanned Aerial Vehicles can be controlled via remote Ground Control Center (GCS) and are operated airborne, making it easier to observe any object. These advantages led target tracking with UAVs to be one of intensively researched and studied areas in aerospace engineering. Methods of acquiring measurements of a target with a UAV platform are using sensors like Radar, Vision Camera, or Range Finders. Among those various sensors, this research is focused on using a vision sensor that is convenient to come by, cheap, and easy to implement unto lightweight UAV for target state estimation. vision Sensors, despite all its advantages, measure Line Of Sight(LOS) angles only which are known to be highly non-linear. This type of problem is called Bearing Only Measurement(BOM) problem. Line Of Sight angle measurements that are functions of relative distances make target dynamic modeling hard to be implemented into a filter. To solve this issue, the Pseudomeasurement equation that can transform the LOS measurement equation with relative distance states to target states which enabled the filter to use the 3D variable turn model and Kinematic Constraint into the state transition matrix and measurement equation. Bias Compensation Pseudomeasurement Filter (BCPMF) is used to implement this dynamic model, which is known to be robust to initial conditions over Modified Gain Pseudomeasurement Filter(MGPMF) and Modified Gain Extended Kalman Filter(MGEKF). Moreover, Two-Stage Kalman Filter(TSKF) form was used to benefit from the parallel computation. With these methods, TBCPMF 3DVT-KC is proposed and simulated to assess performance.