MOVING VEHICLE CLASSIFIER WITH NONLINEAR MAPPER

The moving vehicle classifier with nonlinear mapper provides a method and apparatus for estimating the presence of a target moving vehicle in a sensor environment through estimation and classification of the sensor data. Values are extracted from the sensor data and a target function of extracted values is generated. Integrated function values representative of known vehicles in various physical states are prestored in a reference library. An integral function for the target function data is generated and mapped into a number of the prestored reference integral functions which provides a typically nonlinear mapping function. A MMSE curve fit is applied to this nonlinear mapping function to form a scaling factor for use in generating a scaled function of the data. The scaled data function is then compared to scaled reference functions in the library and the most similar, or least dissimilar, reference is chosen as an estimation of what known vehicle the sensor data represents. The output of the apparatus can be presented as a classification or likelihood of classification, as preferred by the application of interest.