A method for determination of attitude of the airborne remote sensing platform is proposed. In this method, the attitude of airborne platform can be obtained on-line by following four steps: (i) recording the attitude of the platform at time t ₀, which serves as the initial attitude; (ii) starting from t ₀, taking aerial images using the dedicated camera fixed on the airborne platform at time t_k (k = 0, 1, 2, …) regularly and noting as the kth (k = 0, 1, 2, …) aerial image; (iii) calculating the attitude change between every two adjacent images; (iv) determining the attitude of the platform at a time according to the initial attitude and the related attitude change. Simulation results proves the theoretical feasibility of the method. The attitude error sources are also be analysed. The attitude accuracy is proportional to focal length, field angle and matching accuracy of the corresponding points. Physical experiments were carried out to illustrate the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed method.

References

1. 1)
  - 2. Komjathy, A., Maslanik, J., Zavorotny, V., et al: ‘Sea ice remote sensing using surface reflected GPS signals’. IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium Conf. Proc. IGARSS, 2000, vol. 7, pp. 2855–2857.
2. 2)
  - 3. George, A.B.: ‘Remote sensing of forest pigments using airborne imaging spectrometer and LIDAR imagery’, Remote Sens. Environ., 2002, 82, pp. 311–321.
3. 3)
  - 1. Kraus, K., Pfeifer, N.: ‘Determination of terrain models in wooded areas with airborne laser scanner data’, ISPRS J. Photogramm. Remote Sens., 1998, 53, (4), pp. 193–203.
4. 4)
  - 7. Han, J.Y., Guo, J., Chou, J.Y.: ‘A direct determination of the orientation parameters in the collinearity equations’, IEEE Geosci. Remote Sens. Lett., 2011, 8, (2), pp. 313–316.
5. 5)
  - 9. Cornall, T.D., Egan, G.K., Price, A.: ‘Aircraft attitude estimation from horizon video’, Electron. Lett., 2006, 42, (13), pp. 744–745.
6. 6)
  - 19. Qi, H.H., Moore, J.B.: ‘Direct Kalman filtering approach for GPS/INS integration’, IEEE Trans. Aerosp. Electron. Syst., 2002, 38, (2), pp. 687–683.
7. 7)
  - 5. Wang, J.Y., Hong, G.L.: ‘Technologies and application of laser active remote sensing’, Laser Infrared, 2006, 36, pp. 742–748.
8. 8)
  - 17. Ahn, H.S., Lee, S.H.: ‘Gyroless attitude estimation of sun-pointing satellites using magnetometers’, IEEE Geosci. Remote Sens. Lett., 2005, 2, (1), pp. 8–12.
9. 9)
  - 26. Jorden, P.R., Morris, D.G., Pool, P.J.: ‘Technology of large focal planes of CCDs’. Focal Plane Arrays for Space Telescopes, Proc. of SPIE, Bellingham, WA, 2004, vol. 5167, pp. 72–82.
10. 10)
  - 8. Mikhail, E., Bethel, J., McGlone, J.: ‘Introduction to modern photogrammetry’ (Wiley, 2001).
11. 11)
  - 6. Wang, J.J., Xu, L.J., Li, X.L., et al: ‘Quantitative evaluation of impacts of random errors on ALS accuracy using multiple linear regression method’, IEEE Trans. Instrum. Meas., 2012, 61, (8), pp. 2242–2252.
12. 12)
  - 13. Janschek, K., Dyblenko, S., Boge, T.: ‘Image based attitude determination using an optical correlator’. Processing 4th ESA Int. Conf. on Spacecraft Guidance, Navigation and Control System, 1999, pp. 487–492.
13. 13)
  - 10. Bazin, J.C., Demonceaux, K.C., Vasseur, P.: ‘UAV Attitude estimation by vanishing points in catadioptric images’. IEEE Int. Conf. on Robotics and Automation, 2008, pp. 2743–2749.
14. 14)
  - 23. Lowe, D.G.: ‘Object recognition from local scale-invariant features’. Proc. of the Int. Conf. on Computer Vision, 1999, vol. 2, pp. 1150–1157.
15. 15)
  - 24. Luo, J., Oubong, G.: ‘A comparison of sift, pca-sift and surf’, Int. J. Image Process., 2009, 3, (4), pp. 143–152.
16. 16)
  - 16. Včelák, J., Kubík, J.: ‘Influence of sensor imperfections to electronic compass attitude accuracy’, Sens. Actuators A Phys., 2009, 155, (2), pp. 233–240.
17. 17)
  - 11. Gai, E., Daly, K., Harrison, J., et al: ‘Star-sensor-based satellite attitude/attitude rate estimator’, J. Guid. Control Dyn., 1985, 8, (5), pp. 560–565.
18. 18)
  - 4. Michael, D., Christian, B., Martin, F., et al: ‘Archaeological prospection of forested areas using full-waveform airborne laser scanning’, J. Archaeological Sci., 2008, 4, pp. 882–893.
19. 19)
  - 18. Xu, T., Xu, L.J., Tian, X.R., et al: ‘GPS-aided method for platform attitude determination based on target images’, Appl. Opt., 2017, 56, (8), pp. 2378–2387.
20. 20)
  - 21. Li, D.R., Wang, S.G., Zhou, Y.Q.: ‘An introduction to photogrammetry and remote sensing’ (Surveying and Mapping Press, Beijng, 2008).
21. 21)
  - 22. Horn, B.K.P.: ‘Relative orientation’, Int. J. Comput. Vis., 1990, 4, (1), pp. 59–78.
22. 22)
  - 14. Zhou, K., Yan, J.G., Qu, Y.H.: ‘Research on algorithm of strapdown INS attitude measurement’, Comput. Meas. Control, 2008, 6, pp. 763–780.
23. 23)
  - 15. Lin, D., Keck, V.L., Guo, R.H., et al: ‘GPS-based attitude determination for microsatellite using three-antenna technology’. IEEE Aerospace Conf., 2004, vol. 2, pp. 1024–1029.
24. 24)
  - 12. Dietz, K., Ramsey, B., Alexander, C., et al: ‘Daytime aspect camera for balloon altitudes’, Opt. Eng., 2002, 41, pp. 2641–2651.
25. 25)
  - 20. Kehoe, J., Causey, R.S., Abdulrahim, M.: ‘Waypoint navigation for a micro air vehicle using vision-based attitude estimation’. AIAA Guidance, Navigation, and Control Conf. and Exhibit, 2005, pp. 1–15.
26. 26)
  - 25. Herbert, B., Andreas, E., Tinne, T., et al: ‘Speeded-up robust features (SURF)’, Comput. Vis. Image Underst., 2008, 110, (3), pp. 346–359.

Airborne platform attitude determination by using aerial image series

References

Related content