Bayesian Knowledge Transfer for a Kalman Fixed-Lag Interval Smoother

A Bayesian knowledge transfer mechanism that leverages external information to improve the performance of the Kalman fixed-lag interval smoother (FLIS) is proposed. Exact knowledge of the external observation model is assumed to be missing, which hinders the direct application of Bayes’ rule in traditional transfer learning approaches. This limitation is overcome by the fully probabilistic design, conditioning the targeted task of state estimation on external information. To mitigate the negative impact of inaccurate external data while leveraging precise information, a latent variable is introduced. Favorably, in contrast to a filter, FLIS retrospectively refines past decisions up to a fixed time horizon, reducing the accumulation of estimation error and consequently improving the performance of state inference. Simulations indicate that the proposed algorithm better exploits precise external knowledge compared to a similar technique and achieves comparable results when the information is imprecise.