VEHICLE NAVIGATION USING 3D CAMERA

AN AUTONOMOUS AIRFIELD REPAIR VEHICLE (ARV) WILL NEED TO BE ABLE TO NAVIGATE THROUGH AN AREA TO PERFORM REPAIR OPERATIONS ON RUNWAYS AND TAXIWAYS. IN ORDER TO SIMPLIFY USE, IT IS IMPERATIVE THAT ONLY THE ONBOARD SENSORS AND MEMORY RESIDENT TOPOGRAPHICAL MAP BE USED FOR THIS NAVIGATION. INTELLIGENT AUTOMATION, INC., HAS DEVELOPED THE CONCEPT FOR A THREE DIMENSIONAL CAMERA WHICH WILL GIVE A FULL RANGE MAP OF THE SCENE AS SEEN BY THE CAMERA AT A RATE OF 60 FRAMES PER SECOND. OUR INITIAL EXPERIMENTS SHOW THAT WE WILL BE ABLE TO OBTAIN AN ACCURACY OF LESS THAN 1 INCH OVER A RANGE OF 100 FEET FROM THE CAMERA, WHICH IS FAR BETTER THAN THE 1/2 FOOT REQUIREMENT OF THE ARV. THE FULL, ACCURATE RANGE IMAGE PRODUCED AT 60 FRAMES PER SECOND MAKE THE PROBLEM OF NAVIGATING BASED ON A TOPOGRAPHICAL MAP A TRIVIAL APPLICATION OF IMAGE MATCHING ALGORITHMS. USING VERY CONVENTIONAL TRANSFORMATION MATRICES, THE TOPOGRAPHICAL MAP CAN BE TRANSFORMED TO A RANGE MAP OF DISTANCES FROM THE LAST KNOWN POSITION OF THE CAMERA. THIS IS THEN COMPARED TO THE RANGE IMAGE PRODUCED BY THE CAMERA, AND THE DIFFERENCES USED TO COMPUTE THE NEW POSITION OF THE CAMERA. THE PROCESS IS ITERATIVE, AND WILL CONVERGE VERY RAPIDLY. WE ESTIMATE THE TIME TO COMPUTE THE CAMERA'S POSITION TO BE NO MORE THAN 1/15 SECOND. THE KEY IS THAT THE IMAGE WE ARE CAPTURING WITH OUR CAMERA IS NOT A CONVENTIONAL INTENSITY IMAGE, BUT A FULL, ACCURATE RANGE MAP GIVING THE RANGE TO EVERY POINT IN THE SCENE. THE INFORMATION IN THE RANGE IMAGE IS THE SAME TYPE OF INFORMATION AS IS IN THE TOPOGRAPHICAL MAP, HENCE THE PROBLEM REDUCES TO ONE OF SIMPLE PATTERN MATCHING.