Raytheon Company

Hagos Teku

Thomas K Lo

Nikki J Lawrence

A generalized Hough transform is used to acquire and track vehicular targets for missile guidance. This is accomplished by recognizing that most vehicles have silhouettes that may be described as a 'rounded rectangle'. The position and shape of such rounded rectangles is described in terms of 5 parameters (x, y, a, b, &#x3b8;) where x, yare the center coordinates, a,b are the major and minor axis and &#x398; is the orientation. The computation of a five dimensional Hough transform on an image including such a target will produce the five parameters that provide the 'best fit' rounded rectangle to the target. These parameters are then passed to a missile tracker. This capability can be used to improve track gate handoff from the automatic target recognizer (ATR) to the missile tracker, changing aspect ratios of maneuvering targets, limited lock-on after launch (LOAL), aimpoint designation and fire control system to missile seeker handover.

Growing community of inventors

Tucson, AZ, United States of America

Hagos Teku