Patent Document ID: 7499833
Application ID: 10881115
Patent Status: 1

Claim One:
1. A method for fusing plural evidence data obtained from a sensor, said method comprising the steps of: observing at least one object with a sensor to produce N sequential samples of evidence data representing characteristics, including at least a characteristic a, of said object at the times of the samples; determining a probability b N of obtaining N 1 occurrences of evidence E 1 given that characteristic a was observed, by fusing evidence data employing the equation b N ⁡ ( N 1 | a ) = ( N N 1 ) ⁢ p ⁡ ( E 1 | a ) N 1 ⁢ p ⁡ ( E 2 | a ) N - N 1 ( 2 ) where: N is the number of independent observations of the evidence data of characteristic a of the object; N 1 is the number of times within the group of N samples that evidence E 1 is obtained; and E 2 is any evidence other than E 1 ; determining the likelihood that characteristic a was observed given that evidence E 1 was produced N 1 times during the sequence of observations by employing the equation B N ⁡ ( a | N 1 ) = b N ⁡ ( N 1 | a ) b N ⁡ ( N 1 | a ) + b N ⁡ ( N 1 | b ) ( 3 ) where B N (a|N 1 ) is the likelihood that a was observed given that evidence E 1 occurred N 1 times out of N sequential samples; b N (N 1 |b) is the likelihood that b was observed given that evidence E 1 occurred N 1 times out of N sequential samples.