Aerospace and Electronic Systems Magazine May 2017 - 19

erally do not contain enough details to fully reproduce the results.
Indeed, in [9], [14], [17], it is noted that when code is supplied, it
frequently differs from the algorithmic description given in the associated papers, and that the papers alone are often insufficient to
document the algorithm. In [25], it is noted that only 12% of papers
considered in a study of recent publications in IEEE Transactions on
Image Processing articles contained implementation details.
The push for the source code and data in scientific works has
manifested itself in many ways. For example, IEEE Transactions
on Image Processing, IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing,
and the journal Nature are a few of the many journals that allow
authors to submit code data and other material to be published online in addition to their papers. Additionally, other organizations
have put specific projects online. For example, the Association for
Computing Machinery has long had a repository of code related to
papers published in their transactions online3 at http://calgo.acm.
org and the International Astronomical Union (IAU) manages the
free Standard of Fundamental Astronomy library [25] at http://
www.iausofa.org. The push for open, reproducible research has
also made it to government.
In 2012, the President of the United States issued a memorandum
[19] "requiring agencies to establish central online resources for outside developers and to adopt new standards for making applicable
government information open and machine-readable by default."
Further executive actions have extended the idea of information in
various ways. For example, a memorandum [4] directs agencies to
"collect or create information in a way that supports downstream
information processing and dissemination activities," to "Build information systems to support interoperability and information accessibility," and to "Create and maintain an enterprise data inventory."
As work performed solely by employees of the U.S. government is
not subject to copyright, a greater availability of government-made
work can benefit everyone. Examples of U.S. government websites
that provide open data or code include, among others,
1. http://www.data.gov
2. http://code.nasa.gov

FILTERING ALGORITHMS

3. http://www.darpa.mil/OpenCatalog/index.html

The Tracker Component Library contains a number of filtering
algorithms, primarily those focused on single Gaussian approxi-

4. http://www.healthdata.gov
5. http://pfmabe.software
3

Unfortunately, the code cannot be used for commercial purposes
without a specific license.

MAY 2017

A great many governments around the world, not just the United
States, also provide source code for many projects on GitHub as
listed at https://government.github.com/community/, and other
governments have their own repositories of specialized code and
data. For example, Austria has data online at https://www.data.
gv.at, and Germany has Earth and environmental science data online in English at http://www.komfor.net
Open-source projects for target tracking have existed in
the past but have always been significantly smaller and more
specialized than the Tracker Component Library. Examples are
listed in the following: the EKF/UKF Toolbox for MATLAB at
http://becs.aalto.fi/en/research/bayes/ekfukf/; the KALMTOOL
toolbox [3] at http://www.iau.dtu.dk/research/control/kalmtool2.
html; NFTools [11] at http://nft.kky.zcu.cz/nftools; the Kalman
Filter Toolbox for MATLAB at https://www.cs.ubc.ca/~murphyk/
Software/Kalman/kalman.html; and PFLib for particle filters
[5].4 The Tracker Component Library is currently larger than
each of those projects. However, there is much in the field of
tracking that is not in the library.
With regard to target tracking, a larger project encouraging
the sharing of code is beginning, and it is anticipated that much
of the Tracker Component Library will merge into this project. In
2014, Paul Thomas of the United Kingdom's Defence Science and
Technology Laboratory proposed in a letter an open framework for
target tracking dubbed "Stone Soup" [22]. A major part of the idea
is that by collecting many algorithms, one can easily determine the
best techniques to use and save others the hassle of "reinventing
the wheel." Recently, a group under The Technical Cooperation
Program (TTCP)5 between Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the
United Kingdom, and the United States was formed to create a
large open repository of modular, reusable code related to target
tracking and sensor data fusion. The program is open to nations
not in the TTCP, and there should eventually be a website online
allowing all to access the library and to submit algorithms for others to share.

There is no Uniform Resource Locator (URL) for PFLib, as the
authors wish to be contacted directly for the code.
For more information, see http://www.acq.osd.mil/ttcp/
overview/

IEEE A&E SYSTEMS MAGAZINE

https://government.github.com/community/ https://www.data.gv.at https://www.data.gv.at http://www.komfor.net http://becs.aalto.fi/en/research/bayes/ekfukf/ http://www.iau.dtu.dk/research/control/kalmtool2.html http://www.iau.dtu.dk/research/control/kalmtool2.html http://nft.kky.zcu.cz/nftools https://www.cs.ubc.ca/~murphyk/Software/Kalman/kalman.html https://www.cs.ubc.ca/~murphyk/Software/Kalman/kalman.html http://calgo.acm.org http://calgo.acm.org http://www.iausofa.org http://www.iausofa.org http://www.data.gov http://code.nasa.gov http://www.darpa.mil/OpenCatalog/index.html http://www.healthdata.gov http://www.pfmabe.software http://www.acq.osd.mil/ttcp/overview/ http://www.acq.osd.mil/ttcp/overview/

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Aerospace and Electronic Systems Magazine May 2017