Estimation of Target Range and Orientation from Video Images.

摘要

Under National Ground Intelligence Center (NOIC) sponsorship, BBN technologies (BBN) has initiated the development of a model to estimate the acoustic source strength of a target at different azimuth, elevation, and viewing-axis angles from a videotaped record. The model comprises two distinct parts: (a) Estimation of the target range and orientation from video images and known geometric information; (b) Estimation of the acoustic source strength from recorded signatures corresponding to the video images. The first part of this work has been completed and is the subject of this paper. The Target Range and Orientation Estimation Model ('Video Range Finder') is based on an interactive procedure that enables the user to associate identifiable features of the video image with distinct, preselected physical components of the target. These points define a 3-dimensional polyhedron in the coordinate frame of the target, which is projected onto the 2-dimensional polygon image at the focal plane of video camera, along the viewing axis. The azimuth, elevation, and viewing-axis rotation angles are obtained through an LMS solution of the associated projection equations, which are non-linear with respect to these angles. The calculated angles are subsequently used in the estimation of the target range. The paper discusses the solution method and demonstrates the use of the model using both simulated and real objects.