HIERARCHICAL 3D DOPPLER IMAGING CO2 LADAR WITH PROGRAMMABLE FOVEA AND PERIPHERAL VISION

LASER RADAR (LADAR) IMAGING HAS BEEN POSTULATED AS PROVIDING DATA SIGNIFICANT TO ROBOTIC VISION. WE PROPOSE TOADD DOPPLER VELOCITY MEASUREMENT TO EXISTING 3D AND INTENSITY IMAGING AND AN INTERACTIVE PROGRAMMABLE SCANNER/SIGNAL PROCESSOR CONCEPT, USING LONG RANGE CO2 LASERHETERODYNE IMPLEMENTATION. A DUAL FOV SCANNER APPROACH WILLBE INVESTIGATED TO ALLOW SIMULATNEOUS WIDE FOV BODY TRACKINGAND NARROW FOV FEATURE IDENTIFICATION IN A SINGLE OPTICAL, DUAL INTERMEDIATE FREQUENCY (IF) CHANNEL SYSTEM. SEVERAL INTERACTIVE SCANNER/PROCESSOR IMPLEMENTATIONS WILL BE EVALUATED USING A COMPACT BREADBOARD CO2 LADAR SYSTEM ASSEMBLED IN PHASE I. DOPPLER IMAGES OF SPINNING SIMULATED TARGETS WILL BE GENERATED IN PHASE I, AND TARGET RANGING WILL BE DEMONSTRATED TO ZERO FEET. FINALLY, END-TO-END ROBOTIC CONTROL CONCEPTS USING A HIERARCHICAL LADAR/PROCESSOR APPROACH WILL BE EXAMINED IN MORE DETAIL, AND EXPERIMENTS ADDRESSING SEVERAL KEY ISSUES WILL BE PERFORMED. SINCE THIS PROJECT IS ADVANCING THE CAPABILITY OF THE SENSOR HARDWARE PORTION OF THE ROBOTIC VISION PROBLEM, SUCCESS IN THIS PROJECT COUPLED TO PROPOSED ADVANCES IN PROCESSING HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE WILL TAKE A SIGNIFICANT STEP FORWARD IN AUTONOMOUS ROBOTICS, WHICH HAS FAR REACHING COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS. SPECIFIC APPLICATIONS IN AUTONOMOUS MOVING VEHICLES WILL BE REALIZED, IN ADDITION TO THE VELOCITY IMAGING PORTION OF THE PROJECT.