1. A computer readable storage medium having a method encoded thereon, the method represented by computer readable programming code, executed by a computer to perform the method comprising the steps of: classifying input sensor data by comparing one or more measured target attributes with one or more known attributes of a finite set of uniquely identified targets; generating an initial set of one or more candidate targets based upon a comparison of the classified input sensor data with the known attributes of the finite set of uniquely identified targets; calculating a minimum required speed for each candidate target to travel between a geolocation history location and a location provided by the input sensor data, the minimum required speed subject to both obstacle avoidance and status transition time constraints; assigning a statistical weight to each candidate target based upon its calculated minimum required speed; calculating a data association probability of each candidate target with the classified input sensor data; and generating a final set of candidate targets by selecting the candidate targets from the initial set of candidate targets having calculated data association probabilities that exceed a predetermined threshold value.
18. The computer readable storage medium of claim 1 , wherein if the initial set of candidate targets comprises m initial candidate targets, total weight w t is defined as the sum of each individual weight w j , w t = ∑ j = 1 m ⁢ ⁢ w j . then a data association probability P j with which a j th candidate target may be associated with the sensor data is determined by p j = w j w t .