ABSTRACT

The tracking technologies employed span a variety of engineering fields that include optics, electromagnetics, electronics, and mechanics. This multi-disciplinary combination often makes it challenging to understand the working principle of a given tracking system. To facilitate understanding, we propose a top-down taxonomy on the technology that emphasizes the underlying physical principles of operation and the types of measurements involved. We chose such taxonomy because it allows summarizing a large body of work in a manner that we hope will stimulate going beyond the applications and the requirements for tracking and learning more about the various underlying technologies themselves. We also hope it will stimulate the generation of new ideas to the tracking problem.