Hughes Aircraft Company

Raytheon Company

Steven L Chodos

Arthur K Rue

Gordon T Pope

Gillian K Groves

Larisa Stephan

Stacy Roszkowski

An edge locator processor having memory and which employs a generalized biased centroid edge locator process to determining the leading edge of an object in a scene moving in a generally horizontal direction across a video screen. The generalized biased centroid edge locator process includes defining a gate and determining the centroid position for that portion of the object within the gate. This occurs for a succession of gates, until predetermined conditions are met. By constructing this series of successively expanding gates, a left gate edge position and centroid position may be determined for each gate to define a series of left edge and centroid positions. These values may be linearly correlated to provide a slope and an intercept, from which the edge may be determined.

Generalized biased centroid edge locator

A tracking system and method that achieves system bandwidth reduction and analyzes scene information from an expanded area around a tracked target. Objects in the scene that may interfere with the target and cause degraded tracking performance are tracked to determine the level of likely perturbation of a primary tracker due to interference. The system predicts the time at which interference due to clutter objects will occur and the estimated time duration of the interference. The system uses this information to determine and variably adjust the gains of a track loop to prevent track loss while detecting and tracking maneuvers of the target.

Adaptive track loop bandwidth reduction in cluttered scenes

Point and area target tracking are employed by a dual mode video tracker which includes both a correlation processor (30) and a centroid processor (32) for processing incoming video signals representing the target scene (20) and for generating tracking error signals over an entire video frame. A microcomputer (26) controls the operation of the correlation and centroid processors, as well as a preprocessor (28) which preconditions the incoming video signals. The tracker operates in any of several modes in which the correlation and centroid processors function either independently or cooperatively with each other. The correlation processor generates a reference map in pixel format which is used to produce azimuth and elevation optimal weighting values for each pixel in the field-of-view. The reference map is recursively updated. The track gate for the correlation processor is automatically sized using a gradient function derived from the optimal weighting values. The gradient function is also employed along with difference video to determine correlation tracking status. The correlation and centroid tracking errors may be combined to form a composite signal defining a true complementary function.

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Los Angeles, CA, United States of America

Steven L Chodos