Tracking an Object in Space Using the Kalman Filter
Tracking an Object in Space Using the Kalman Filter
Tracking an object in space using the Kalman filter can reconstruct its trajectory and velocity from noisy measurements in real time. The object, indicated by a blue pentagon, undergoes motion in a gravitational potential of adjustable magnitude created by an external mass, chosen as the Moon, whose position you can control by dragging. The boundary conditions at the box edge are reflective.
1/r
At regular intervals in time, measurements of the object's position are made with some additive measurement noise, drawn from a zero-mean Gaussian distribution. The Kalman filter is used to reconstruct both the trajectory of the object, shown in red, and the object's velocity, whose magnitude is indicated in the plot on the bottom left. The mean-square error (MSE) between the reconstructed and true state vectors is shown as an estimate of the filter's performance in the middle-left pane.