Physics Commons^™

Optical Tracking For Relative Positioning In Automated Aerial Refueling, James H. Spencer

Theses and Dissertations

An algorithm is designed to extract features from video of an air refueling tanker for use in determining the precise relative position of a receiver aircraft. The algorithm is based on receiving a known estimate of the tanker aircraft's position and attitude. The algorithm then uses a known feature model of the tanker to predict the location of those features on a video frame. A corner detector is used to extract features from the video. The measured corners are then associated with known features and tracked from frame to frame. For each frame, the associated features are used to calculate …