Interview With Professor Yaakov Bar-Shalom

I am guessing that many of our readers know our subject in this interview very well. Yaakov Bar-Shalom is my University of Connecticut colleague, my collaborator, my mentor, and my friend. One cannot overstate his impact on dynamic estimation, especially that which labors under the burden of measurement-origin-uncertainty (MOU). These may be unusual terms to some readers, but dynamic estimation means filtering (like Kalman) and tracking for prediction and fire-control, and MOU refers to having a “bag” of measurements (like radar plots) and having no idea a priori which are target-generated and which false; and, among the latter, which come from which objects.