Monitoring and self-assessment of tracking algorithms are essential in modern automated driving systems. However, the further use of this self-assessment information is another growing and not thoroughly studied area of research. One option is to adapt the parameters configured in the tracking algorithm online to obtain better and more robust tracking results directly. The paper proposes a novel overall concept and framework for adaptive Kalman filtering using subjective logic. Based on a self-assessment method, we present multiple variants of adaptive strategies to adapt the noise assumptions online for Kalman filtering. This paper focuses mainly on adaptation procedures for multi-sensor Kalman filters. The proposed method is evaluated in various experiments and compared with state-of-the-art adaptive Kalman filters.

Operation monitoring for automation systems requires self-assessment of all data processing modules. In this work, we extend our new self-assessment method for linear Kalman filters based on subjective logic to nonlinear Kalman filtering. Furthermore, we propose novel approaches within this subjective logic-based framework to assess the overall filter performance in multi-sensor systems online, i.e., in real-time without ground truth data. The results of the proposed self-assessment method for nonlinear Kalman filtering are demonstrated through simulation studies, showing advantages compared to classical consistency measures, like the normalized innovation squared. In addition, the results of the proposed online overall filtering assessment for multi-sensor systems can even compete with consistency measures based on ground truth data, which cannot be applied in online applications.

The multi-sensor Labeled Multi-Bernoulli filter has the challenge of relying on the NP-hard multi-sensor update of the Generalized Labeled Multi-Bernoulli filter. This paper proposes the Fast Product Multi-Sensor Labeled Multi-Bernoulli filter, which is a filter for multi-sensor systems that solves this task by performing computationally simpler single-sensor Labeled Multi-Bernoulli filter updates based on a common prediction for each sensor. These single-sensor updates are then fused using a novel and efficient fusion strategy. Furthermore, the proposed filter is based on the Bayes parallel combination rule and can be seen as an efficient approximation of the multi-sensor Labeled Multi-Bernoulli filter. It enables full parallelization of the update step and benefits from sensor order independence compared to Iterated Corrector implementations. As a result, the robustness is increased, which is important for safety reasons, e.g., in autonomous driving. Our approach is evaluated on simulations, and the results are compared to an Iterated Corrector implementation of the Labeled Multi-Bernoulli filter.

A main task for automated vehicles is an accurate and robust environment perception. Especially, an error-free detection and modeling of other traffic participants is of great importance to drive safely in any situation. For this purpose, multi-object tracking algorithms, based on object detections from raw sensor measurements, are commonly used. However, false object hypotheses can occur due to a high density of different traffic participants in complex, arbitrary scenarios. For this reason, the presented approach introduces a probabilistic model to verify the existence of a tracked object. Therefore, an object verification module is introduced, where the influences of multiple digital map elements on a track's existence are evaluated. Finally, a probabilistic model fuses the various influences and estimates an extended existence probability for every track. In addition, a Bayes Net is implemented as directed graphical model to highlight this work's expandability. The presented approach, reduces the number of false positives, while retaining true positives. Real world data is used to evaluate and to highlight the benefits of the presented approach, especially in urban scenarios.

Self-assessment is a key to safety and robustness in automated driving. In order to design safer and more robust automated driving functions, the goal is to self-assess the performance of each module in a whole automated driving system. One crucial component in automated driving systems is the tracking of surrounding objects, where the Kalman filter is the most fundamental tracking algorithm. For Kalman filters, some classical online consistency measures exist for self-assessment, which are based on classical probability theory. However, these classical approaches lack the ability to measure the explicit statistical uncertainty within the self-assessment, which is an important quality measure, particularly, if only a small number of samples is available for the self-assessment. In this work, we propose a novel online self-assessment method using subjective logic, which is a modern extension of probabilistic logic that explicitly models the statistical uncertainty. Thus, by embedding classical Kalman filtering into subjective logic, our method additionally features an explicit measure for statistical uncertainty in the self-assessment.

A good and robust sensor data fusion in diverse weather conditions is a quite challenging task. There are several fusion architectures in the literature, e.g. the sensor data can be fused right at the beginning (Early Fusion), or they can be first processed separately and then concatenated later (Late Fusion). In this work, different fusion architectures are compared and evaluated by means of object detection tasks, in which the goal is to recognize and localize predefined objects in a stream of data. Usually, state-of-the-art object detectors based on neural networks are highly optimized for good weather conditions, since the well-known benchmarks only consist of sensor data recorded in optimal weather conditions. Therefore, the performance of these approaches decreases enormously or even fails in adverse weather conditions. In this work, different sensor fusion architectures are compared for good and adverse weather conditions for finding the optimal fusion architecture for diverse weather situations. A new training strategy is also introduced such that the performance of the object detector is greatly enhanced in adverse weather scenarios or if a sensor fails. Furthermore, the paper responds to the question if the detection accuracy can be increased further by providing the neural network with a-priori knowledge such as the spatial calibration of the sensors.

The dynamic grid map illustrates the environment of robots with moving and static obstacles. Nuss et al. describe in [1] an implementation of this grid map, in which the state of the grid cells is to be modeled as a random finite set (RFS) based on a stochastic measurement system. For a real-time implementation this approach was approximated with Dempster-Shafer (DS). For this Nuss et al. design the areas without information (unknown areas) so, that no probabilistic calculations are executed. Only in the field of view, hypotheses represent the dynamic behavior of objects. This hypotheses are generated with particles. Therefore, in [1] it was proposed to extend this modeling. In this paper a pure Bayes approach is presented, which calculates all areas of the dynamic grid map probabilistic. Now, the resulting modeling generates hypotheses, which represent the dynamic behavior of unobservable objects. Thus, objects moving out of unknown areas can be detected more quickly. This leads to a more intuitive understanding as well as representation of the environment.

In this contribution we apply the probability hypothesis density (PHD) filter algorithm for joint tracking of an unknown varying number of targets to automotive environment sensing systems. We use data from a vision and a lidar sensor as well as the vehicle ESP system. After deriving a method to parametrise the algorithm systematically from detection performance statistics we proof the applicability of the method for automotive tracking based on real sensor data