Accurate Angle of Incidence (AOI) Measurement Capability

ABSTRACT:Missile test events provide the ability to evaluate the lethality of weapons systems in real-world conditions. While often immediately obvious whether the main goal of a test has succeeded/failed, it is much harder to analyze and understand the specific causes of success/failure. Current practices require arduous physical analysis of the target and its surroundings after the test is completed to obtain the level of detailed information needed. Among the most important metrics to analyze is Angle of Incidence (AOI). To accurately calculate AOI, 3D position/orientation of the weapon system must be precisely estimated at impact. To ensure that all test event information is fully utilized to further weapon system design and understanding, it is necessary to develop a system for providing accurate estimation and analysis of the weapon system during test event endgame. In Phase I, Toyon developed and demonstrated a video processing approach that provides highly accurate 3D target reconstruction, and 3D weapon system estimation to allow accurate 3D recreation of the entire test event endgame. In Phase II, Toyon proposes automating, extending, implementing, and demonstrating this low-cost COTS system in an prototype that allows users to fully recreate real-world test events and analyze their results with minimal effort.BENEFIT:The successful completion of this research will result in the development of a prototype sensor system that provides accurate 3D tracking and modeling capabilities for accurately measuring AOI. This sensor concept will prove invaluable for developing, testing, and analyzing current and future military weapons systems in live fire scenarios against a wide array of targets and environments. Successful development of a video based sensor system would also provide a transition path to providing AOI in tests containing moving platforms, such as maritime test events, and to several commercial applications. The system leverages very mature and rapidly progressing COTS EO/IR video sensor technology, which benefits from a large user community and decreases cost of the overall system. Additionally, utilizing video sensor technologies extends the range of potential commercialization opportunities for the developed algorithms and sensor architecture.