Precision Geo-Location for Turreted Electro-Optic Sensors

"A novel method for improving the geo-location of ground and marine targets using current and next generation airborne, turreted, Forward Looking Infra-Red (FLIR) sensors is proposed. The approach generates the target's position on the surface of the earthdirectly and thus includes all error sources and attempts to minimize total location error. The quality of the geo-location information is expected to sufficiently high enough to support precision strike capability. The solution proposed here is alsocharacterized by1) Refinement of the target's geo-location by observing the behavior of the line of sight (LOS) to the target over time using passive ranging like algorithms 2) Automated procedures for alignment of the FLIR coordinate system to the own-ship's targeting(i.e. weapons) coordinate system are included 3)Automated procedures for measuring and compensating optical system distortions and image plane mis-alignment are provided 4) Novel stationary surface target tracking techniques are proposed that work well thelow contrast FLIR environment 5)The system works with or without an IMU located on the turret's stabilized platform 6) The system works with or without target range being known and 7)The method proposed below can also be applied to electro-optical systemsas well as Infra-Red systems. Placing ground targets at risk to a wide variety of today's highly precise weapons first requires precision geo-location of the target. Pr