An integrated model of hard and soft context in sensor management

The integration of hard (physical) and soft (meta-physical) contexts in an information fusion system requires the identification of the specific mission oriented goals which it is desired to achieve. Just as most sensors cannot acquire data omnidirectionally, it is not computationally feasible to evaluate all contexts within which acquired data can be understood by an information fusion system. We first define a notional problem consisting of operating and hiding areas and transit routes between them. We then define physical and meta-physical contexts within which data acquired from the observed area can be interpreted and define the piecewise application of context specific transformations to a partition of the global problem of understanding data in context.