Navigation Aided Image Processing in UAV Surveillance: Preliminary Results and Design of an Airborne Experimental System

TLDR: An airborne reconfigurable measurement system being developed at Swedish Defence Research Agency (FOI), Sensor Technology, Sweden is described, and an image processing oriented sensor management architecture for UAV (unmanned aerial vehicles) IRsEO-surveillance is presented.

Abstract: This paper describes an airborne reconfigurable measurement system being developed at Swedish Defence Research Agency (FOI), Sensor Technology, Sweden. An image processing oriented sensor management architecture for UAV (unmanned aerial vehicles) IRsEO-surveillance is presented. Some preliminary results of navigation aided image processing in UAV applications are demonstrated, such as SLAM (simultaneous localization and mapping), structure from motion and geolocation, target tracking, and detection of moving objects. The design goal of the measurement system is to emulate a UAV-mounted sensor gimbal using a stand-alone system. The minimal configuration of the system consists of a gyro-stabilized gimbal with IR and CCD sensors and an integrated high-performance navigation system. The navigation system combines dGPS real-time kinematics (RTK) data with data from an inertial measurement unit (IMU) mounted with reference to the optical sensors. The gimbal is to be used as an experimental georeferenced sensor platform, using a choice of carriers, to produce military relevant image sequences for studies of image processing and sensor control on moving surveillance and reconnaissance platforms. Furthermore, a high resolution synthetic environment, developed for sensor simulations in the visual and infrared wavelengths, is presented. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.