Multi-sensor object tracking performance limits by the Cramer-Rao lower bound

This paper presents a systematic approach to evaluate the tracking performance limits for different sensor modalities (lidar, radar and vision) and for combination of these sensors modalities. The Cramer-Rao lower bound (CRLB) is used to predict the tracking performance limits for state of the art sensors such as the Continental ARS408 radar, Velodyne HDL-64E lidar and a state of the art monocular/stereo camera. The performance is evaluated by computing the theoretical CRLB in urban and highway environments. In both scenarios, the best performance was achieved by a combination of lidar and radar. In the close range, stereo vision improves the longitudinal tracking performance limits. Furthermore, radar is crucial on highways because of the quick longitudinal convergence characteristics.