Data fusion is a research area that is growing rapidly due to the fact that it provides means for combining pieces of information coming from different sources/sensors, resulting in ameliorated overall system performance (improved decision making, increased detection capabilities, diminished number of false alarms, improved reliability in various situations at hand) with respect to separate sensors/sources. Different data fusion methods have been developed in order to optimize the overall system output in a variety of applications for which data fusion might be useful: security (humanitarian, military), medical diagnosis, environmental monitoring, remote sensing, robotics. Generally speaking, there is no fusion approach that works better than the others, but depending.
