Patent Document ID: 7778943
Application ID: 11765048
Patent Status: 1

Claim One:
1. An information fusion system comprising; at least two diagnostic algorithms for providing belief values about a failure mode of a mechanism; a filter for receiving the belief values from the diagnostic algorithms and providing smoothed belief values; and an aggregator for aggregating the smoothed belief values into at least one diagnostic state; and wherein: one diagnostic algorithm is coupled to a diagnostic module comprising a demultiplexer having an output connected to an input of the filter; another diagnostic algorithm is coupled to an aggregation module having an input connected to an output of the filter; the filter is a Kalman filter; and the filter is for smoothing noise in the belief values provided by the diagnostic algorithms; the filter uses a diagnostic state at time t−1 to smooth out noise in the belief value provided by a diagnostic algorithm at time t; the aggregating the smoothed belief values from the filter takes into account a conflict among evidence provided by the diagnostic algorithms; and multiple failure mode hypotheses are generated by taking a pair-wise union of elements in the conflict and iteratively taking pair-wise unions of multiple failure hypotheses generated during a previous iteration.