PARTS OF THE EQUATION
Some new cars come equipped with sophisticated sensors capable of detecting other cars within colliding distance, in addition to simple sensors, such as the speedometer and tachometer. Those older sensors only detect, as when the check-engine light comes on, providing only the information that an anomaly has been detected, but no detail as to what the anomaly is. Other sensors are needed to confirm the cause. (Image by adventtr/iStock)
If detection sensors are cheap, why are confirmation sensors expensive?
A thermometer that a doctor uses to tell if a child has a fever probably doesn't cost much, but a lab, with all of the equip- ment and people needed to confirm or rule out a single kind of infection, offers a different example. Or consider the "check engine" light in the car, which tells you only that something is wrong, but not what. Finding that "what" requires more sophisticated equipment and usually considerable expense. Still, there is good reason to find the root problem because, while it could be nothing, it also could be a warning of something catastrophic.
Te locate-and-confirm method is simple yet powerful, because the anomaly detec- tion and confirmation processes work together very well.
Detection does not give specifics, but it gives a set of causes for the anomaly. Tus, detecting an anomaly often shows that more detection must be done. On the other hand, while the confirmation method does provide specifics, applying it against a large set of possible causes for the anomaly can be unwieldy.
CONCLUSION While confirmation sensors provide a clear-cut means for lowering false-alarm rates in detection, their benefits outweigh their costs only in certain applications. In addition to the example of medical diagnosis, the utility of fused detection and confirmation sensors is evident in applications for which the sensor
sys-
tem is conceived to detect and confirm improvised explosive devices (IEDs) or biological agents, situations in which false alarms can produce devastating results.
However, in applications where a radar track shows an anomaly in the sky that can be correlated with an incoming mis- sile or aircraft, a confirmation sensor may not be needed, because only a very limited set of objects can produce an anomaly that meets that profile of the missile or aircraft.
Te locate-and-confirm sensor fusion method provides a cost-effective, practi- cal, adaptable and tractable way of fusing sensor data to minimize sensor system false alarms. Further, it is innately easy to understand, showing the ease with which complementary sensing observables can combine to provide a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts.
DR. TOM STARK is founder and president of Principia Solutions LLC, a firm that specializes in solving emerging high-risk technical problems, in which the problem and solution spaces are not well-defined. Previously he served as a scientist at the Joint IED Defeat Organization, managing and fielding technologies in a range of areas, including explosives
detection, counter-
person and counter-vehicle suicide bombing, and sensor fusion. Most recently, he was chief scientist and chief technical officer of Global Technical Systems, a woman-owned small business that develops next-generation energy
storage solutions and intelligent
sensor networks. He holds a Ph.D. and master's in physics from the University of North Texas, and a bachelor's in physics from Virginia Commonwealth University. He is a member of Sigma Pi Sigma, the physics honor society. His current areas of specialization include active and passive forms of threat detection, intelligent sensor systems, signal processing, energy and power systems and numerical modeling.
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