Automatic target tracking with time-delayed measurements for unmanned surface vehicles

Abstract

This paper presents the automatic target detection and tracking of marine obstacles for unmanned surface vehicles (USVs). For practical applications with a USV, the automatic detection of surrounding obstacles is an important capability, and marine radars have been commonly used to detect and estimate the motion of obstacles. However, their tracking performance degrades when a target is approaching at a high relative velocity due to their relatively low sampling rate. This study addresses the automatic target tracking of marine obstacles by considering time-delayed measurements provided by a marine radar. The relative bearing and range information between a USV and nearby obstacles is obtained using the radar sensor, and their motion including position, course, and speed is estimated using an extended Kalman lter (EKF)-based tracking lter by compensating the measurement delay. To validate the feasibility of the proposed method, a real-sea experiment was conducted using a USV and the results are presented.