Editing Sensor fusion (section)

{{Short description|Combining of sensor data from disparate sources}}
[[File:Eurofighter sensor fusion.png|thumb|upright=1.5|[[Eurofighter]] sensor fusion]]
'''Sensor fusion''' is a process of combining [[sensor]] data or data derived from disparate sources so that the resulting [[information]] has less uncertainty than would be possible if these sources were used individually. For instance, one could potentially obtain a more accurate location estimate of an indoor object by combining multiple data sources such as video cameras and [[WiFi localization]] signals. The term ''uncertainty reduction'' in this case can mean more accurate, more complete, or more dependable, or refer to the result of an emerging view, such as [[stereoscopy|stereoscopic]] vision (calculation of depth information by combining two-dimensional images from two cameras at slightly different viewpoints).<ref>{{cite book|last = Elmenreich|first = W.|title = Sensor Fusion in Time-Triggered Systems, PhD Thesis|publisher = Vienna University of Technology|location = Vienna, Austria|year = 2002|page = 173|url=https://mobile.aau.at/~welmenre/papers/elmenreich_Dissertation_sensorFusionInTimeTriggeredSystems.pdf}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |doi = 10.1016/j.compeleceng.2011.04.016|title = Multi-focus image fusion for visual sensor networks in DCT domain|journal = Computers & Electrical Engineering|volume = 37|issue = 5|pages = 789–797|year = 2011|last1 = Haghighat|first1 = Mohammad Bagher Akbari|last2 = Aghagolzadeh|first2 = Ali|last3 = Seyedarabi|first3 = Hadi| s2cid=38131177 }}</ref>

The data sources for a fusion process are not specified to originate from identical sensors. One can distinguish ''direct fusion'', ''indirect fusion'' and fusion of the outputs of the former two. Direct fusion is the fusion of sensor data from a set of [[homogeneity and heterogeneity|heterogeneous]] or [[wiktionary:Homogeneous|homogeneous]] sensors, [[soft sensor]]s, and history values of sensor data, while indirect fusion uses information sources like ''[[A priori and a posteriori|a priori]]'' knowledge about the environment and human input.

Sensor fusion is also known as ''(multi-sensor) [[data fusion]]'' and is a subset of ''[[Information integration|information fusion]]''.