Maximum likelihood method for probabilistic multihypothesis tracking

In a multi-target multi-measurement environment, knowledge of the measurement-to-track assignments is typically unavailable to the tracking algorithm. In this paper, a strictly probabilistic approach to the measurement-to-track assignment problem is taken. Measurements are not assigned to tracks as in traditional multi-hypothesis tracking (MHT) algorithms; instead, the probability that each measurement belongs to each track is estimated using a maximum likelihood algorithm derived by the method of Expectation-Maximization. These measurement-to-track probability estimates are intrinsic to the multi-target tracker called the probabilistic multi-hypothesis tracking (PMHT) algorithm. Unlike MHT algorithms, the PMHT algorithm does not maintain explicit hypothesis lists. The PMHT algorithm is computationally practical because it requires neither enumeration of measurement-to-track assignments nor pruning.