The how & why of sensor fusion
Sensor fusion in a nutshell is about combining the information from multiple different sensors in order to obtain a more accurate picture than any single sensor could provide by itself. From a theoretical point of view, sensor fusion is firmly based on understanding probability as a state of knowledge, which allows us to combine and manipulate different sources of information via the methods of Bayesian statistics. From a more practical point of view, real-time numerical sensor fusion is viable primarily due to the fact that Bayesian combinations of Gaussian probability densities yield Gaussian densities as a result. Thus if we can approximate our current state of knowledge and the incoming information using Gaussian probability densities, we can leverage analytical formulae and numerical linear algebra. This allows us to efficiently compute our updated state of knowledge.
