Attitude based trackers for airplane, helicopter and ground targets

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Abstract
A class of aircraft and ground‐vehicle trackers is described that uses imaging sensors and image processing techniques to increase the tracking and prediction accuracy of target tracking systems. The image information is used to obtain the roll, pitch and yaw orientation angles of the target, and this aspect data is shown to be a significant supplement to the position data used by present‐day systems. This paper demonstrates that target aspect angle information as obtained from an image processing system is important in target tracking for the following reasons: for aircraft targets, aspect angle information is directly related to the magnitude and direction of the target acceleration vector; for ground targets, aspect angle gives direct information about the direction of the target velocity vector. Equations of motion are presented that specifically show the relationships between aspect angles and vehicle motion for fixed‐wing aircraft, helicopters, and ground vehicles. Sample results show that for maneuvering targets the trajectory prediction accuracy can be substantially improved using target aspect angle data.

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