Design Study for Passive Sensor Altitude and Terrain Awareness System

摘要

This Phase II effort completed the successful enhancement, implementation, anddemonstration of the passive sensor Altitude and Terrain Awareness System (ATAS) operation using both computer generated and real imagery. The products of this effort include: (1) a test bed and an overall architecture of ATAS that comprises both the real-time image generation and real-time egomotion and terrain shape estimation; and (2) hardware and software specifications for a real-time flight rated ATAS. We developed two types of egomotion and terrain shape estimators to deal with different kinds of terrain conditions, a geometry-based estimator and a structure-based estimator. We conducted a successful on-line demonstration of the ATAS ground-based prototype, driving the system with CGI and flight-recorded imagery, generating running estimates of altitude and attitude with respect to the overflown terrain. (MM).