This paper examines passive ranging from a low-flying aircraft using a forward-looking infrared (FLIR) sensor. Given two different views of a common object scene, it is theoretically possible to determine the relative depth to points in the imaged scene, even when the sensor positions and orientations are not given. The rotation of the sensor and the direction of the translation of the sensor can be inferred from observed optical flow, i.e., from the frame-to-frame changes in the imaged positions of the distinctive points in the scene. However, when the image-to-image disparities are small and corrupted with errors, the resolution of the imaging device imposes a limit on the attainable accuracy. The vector-geometrical algorithm by Yen and Huang is considered for computing sensor rotation and translation. Numerical instabilities resulting from the limited (0.5 radian) field of view are identified. By exploiting other passive on-board instrumentation in a systems approach, it should be possible to overcome the numerical difficulties inherent in the forward-looking geometry.


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    Title :

    Passive ranging from noisy optical flow


    Additional title:

    Passive Entfernungsmessung mit Hilfe eines rauschbehafteten optischen Signalflusses


    Contributors:


    Publication date :

    1984


    Size :

    11 Seiten, 17 Bilder, 1 Tabelle, 12 Quellen


    Type of media :

    Conference paper


    Type of material :

    Print


    Language :

    English