Paper

On the relation between Gaussian process quadratures and sigma-point methods

Volume Number:
11
Issue Number:
1
Pages:
Starting page
31
Ending page
46
Publication Date:
Publication Date
June 2016
Author(s)
Simo Sarkka, Jouni Hartikainen, Lennart Svensson, Fredrik Sandblom

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Abstract

This article is concerned with Gaussian process quadratures, which are numerical integration methods based on Gaussian process regression methods, and sigma-point methods, which are used in advanced non-linear Kalman filtering and smoothing algorithms. We show that many sigma-point methods can be interpreted as Gaussian process quadrature based methods with suitably selected covariance functions. We show that this interpretation also extends to more general multivariate Gauss-Hermite integration methods and related spherical cubature rules. Additionally, we discuss different criteria for selecting the sigma-point locations: exactness of the integrals of multivariate polynomials up to a given order, mini-mum average error, and quasi-random point sets. The performance of the different methods is tested in numerical experiments.