Aspects of the disclosure provide fuel receptacle position/pose estimation for aerial refueling (derived from aircraft position and pose estimation). A video frame (200), showing an aircraft (110) to be refueled, is received from a single camera (108). An initial position/pose estimate (506) is determined for the aircraft (110), which is used to generate an initial rendering (418) of an aircraft model (416). The video frame (200) and the initial rendering (418) are used to determine refinement parameters (440) (e.g., a translation refinement (442) and a rotational refinement (444)) for the initial position/pose estimate (506), providing a refined position/pose estimate (508) for the aircraft (110). The position/pose (622) of a fuel receptacle (116) on the aircraft (110) is determined, based on the refined position/pose estimate (508) for the aircraft (110), and an aerial refueling boom (104) maybe controlled to engage the fuel receptacle (116). Examples extract features from the aircraft (110) in the video frame (200) and the aircraft model rendering, and use a deep learning neural network (NN) to determine the refinement parameters (440). Coo C:)
Pose estimation refinement for aerial refueling
2023-07-20
Patent
Electronic Resource
English
IPC: | B64D Ausrüstung für Flugzeuge , EQUIPMENT FOR FITTING IN OR TO AIRCRAFT / G05D SYSTEMS FOR CONTROLLING OR REGULATING NON-ELECTRIC VARIABLES , Systeme zum Steuern oder Regeln nichtelektrischer veränderlicher Größen / G06T Bilddatenverarbeitung oder Bilddatenerzeugung allgemein , IMAGE DATA PROCESSING OR GENERATION, IN GENERAL / H04N PICTORIAL COMMUNICATION, e.g. TELEVISION , Bildübertragung, z.B. Fernsehen |
TEMPORALLY CONSISTENT POSITION ESTIMATION REFINEMENT FOR AERIAL REFUELING
European Patent Office | 2023
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