Long Baseline Stereovision for Automatic Detection and Ranging of Moving Objects in the Night Sky

Sensors

Radu Danescu²  Florin Oniga²  Vlad Turcu¹ 

[1] Astronomical Observatory Cluj-Napoca, Astronomical Institute of the Romanian Academy, Cireşilor 19, 400487 Cluj-Napoca, Romania; E-Mail:;Technical University of Cluj-Napoca, Memorandumului 28, 400114 Cluj-Napoca, Romania; E-Mail:

关键词: space surveillance;    stereo vision;    automatic calibration;    object recognition;   

DOI  :  10.3390/s121012940

来源: mdpi

【 摘 要 】

As the number of objects in Earth's atmosphere and in low Earth orbit is continuously increasing; accurate surveillance of these objects has become important. This paper presents a generic, low cost sky surveillance system based on stereovision. Two cameras are placed 37 km apart and synchronized by a GPS-controlled external signal. The intrinsic camera parameters are calibrated before setup in the observation position, the translation vectors are determined from the GPS coordinates and the rotation matrices are continuously estimated using an original automatic calibration methodology based on following known stars. The moving objects in the sky are recognized as line segments in the long exposure images, using an automatic detection and classification algorithm based on image processing. The stereo correspondence is based on the epipolar geometry and is performed automatically using the image detection results. The resulting experimental system is able to automatically detect moving objects such as planes, meteors and Low Earth Orbit satellites, and measure their 3D position in an Earth-bound coordinate system.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© 2012 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.