Patent Document ID: 8378880
Application ID: 13243162
Patent Status: 1

Claim One:
1. A method for selecting an object of interest in a cloud of objects of lesser interest, said method comprising the steps of: sensing objects of said cloud with a radio-frequency (RF) sensor at a location, to thereby generate sensed RF signals for at least some of said objects of said cloud; discriminating said sensed RF signals by computing the probability that each RF tracked object is one of a predetermined number (X) of possible object types, to thereby form an RF confusion matrix; sensing objects of said cloud with an optical sensor at a location different from the location of said RF sensor, to thereby generate sensed optical signals for at least some of said objects of said cloud; discriminating said sensed optical signals by computing the probability of each optical tracked object is one of a predetermined number (X) of possible object types to thereby form an optical confusion matrix; calculating the correlations between all pairs of objects consisting of one RF object and one IR object to thereby form an RF/IR correlation matrix; calculating joint probabilities for all pairs of RE and optical signals and all objects to produce a matrix set of joint probabilities; normalizing said joint probabilities over all object types to produce a matrix set of normalized joint probabilities; calculating marginal probabilities of the joint RF/IR discrimination results to produce a vector set of marginal optical probabilities; normalizing said vector set of marginal optical probabilities over all object types to thereby produce a vector set of normalized marginal optical probabilities; and selecting a guide-to object as the IR object of said vector set of normalized marginal optical probabilities with the highest probability of being the object type of interest.