Extended target PMBM tracker with a Gaussian Process target model on LiDAR data

In Multiple Extended Object Tracking, the PMBM (Poisson Multi-Bernoulli Mixture) tracker is considered state-of-the-art. Originally, it was presented with the GGIW (Gamma Gaussian Inverse Wishart) target model, which is a random matrix model. When tracking larger objects using LiDAR, measurements are generated by the contour rather than the whole target surface, and it is beneficial to model this with the target model. A target model which has this capability is the Gaussian Process (GP) extent model. This paper presents a PMBM tracker using this target model. We also discuss considerations related to the use of the GP model in the PMBM framework. Secondly, we present improvements in the target model which increases the robustness of the model by dealing with the inherent nonlinearities using the Gauss-Newton method. We also present a comparison with the GGIW-PMBM tracker on simulated and real LiDAR data gathered from maritime vessels.