Hughes Aircraft Company

Wayne P Simoni

Thomas K Lo

Jack M Sacks

Lynne M Karlin

Harrison Nguyen

Leonard A Lee

Andy L Quan

Kazuo R Hosokawa

A method and apparatus for correlating two signals representing a live image and a reference image are disclosed. The reference signal is processed to provide a polarity bit and mask bit for each pixel position in the reference image. The processed video signal is stored in a memory 20 and used in a convolver and summer section 18 in which the polarity bits between the reference and live images are gated by gate 17 and are used in generating a correlation output from summer 23. However, the polarity bits do not affect the correlation output if the logical output from gate 19 is of a given state which occurs if the associated mask bits indicate that the gradient value at the particular pixel position does not exceed certain minimum threshold values.

Maskable bilevel correlators

A conventional tracker 14 is used to continually aim a sensor 12 at a flying object so that it is located in substantially the same spatial location in a plurality of image frames taken at different times. Thus, the object remains in about the same spatial position in each image frame while the background clutter generally changes. By processing two or more of the image frames it is possible to calculate a more precise aimpoint for the object than is generally provided by the track point.

Segmentation method for terminal aimpoint determination on moving

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Canoga Park, CA, United States of America

Wayne P Simoni