Ants for track initiation of bearings-only tracking

A novel track initiation method using ants of different tasks, a kind of ant colony optimization (ACO) algorithm, is developed in this paper. For the proposed system of ants of different tasks, we assume that the number of tracks to be initiated equals the one of tasks, and moreover, ants of the same task search for a given track by collaboration, while ants of different tasks will compete with each other during the search process. In order to fulfill such behaviors, the pheromone model is established, and the corresponding objective function to be optimized is also presented. Numerical simulation results indicate that, for the case of bearings-only multi-sensor-multi-target tracking, the track initiation performance for the proposed system of ants of different tasks performs well compared to other track initiation methods.