An introduction to multi-sensor data fusion

Multi-sensor data fusion is an emerging technology applied to Department of Defense (DoD) areas such as automated target recognition, battlefield surveillance, and guidance and control of autonomous vehicles, and to non-DoD applications such as monitoring of complex machinery, medical diagnosis, and smart buildings. Techniques for multi-sensor data fusion are drawn from a wide range of areas including artificial intelligence, pattern recognition, statistical estimation, and other areas. This paper provides a tutorial on data fusion, introducing data fusion applications, process models, and identification of applicable techniques. Comments are made on the state-of-the-art in data fusion.