Laser gated viewing: An enabler for automatic target recognition?

Ernst Bovenkamp; Klamer Schutte

doi:10.1117/12.849644

29 April 2010 Laser gated viewing: An enabler for automatic target recognition?

Ernst Bovenkamp, Klamer Schutte

Proceedings Volume 7684, Laser Radar Technology and Applications XV; 76840Z (2010) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.849644
Event: SPIE Defense, Security, and Sensing, 2010, Orlando, Florida, United States

Abstract

For many decades attempts to accomplish Automatic Target Recognition have been made using both visual and FLIR camera systems. A recurring problem in these approaches is the segmentation problem, which is the separation between the target and its background. This paper describes an approach to Automatic Target Recognition using a laser gated viewing system. Here laser-flash illumination is used in combination with a gating viewer such that only a small part in the distance domain is seen in a single image. In our approach, using an Intevac LIVAR 4000 imaging system, we combined several images with different gate settings to construct a 3D data cube. This paper describes the preprocessing and filtering steps taken to obtain a range image for which pixel values represent the distance between camera and objects in the illuminated scene. Depth segmentation is performed using the global histogram of this range image. After this depth segmentation very good 2D object segmentations can be obtained which can be used to classify persons and vehicles. An outlook will be given towards operational application of this procedure.

Citation Download Citation

Ernst Bovenkamp and Klamer Schutte "Laser gated viewing: An enabler for automatic target recognition?", Proc. SPIE 7684, Laser Radar Technology and Applications XV, 76840Z (29 April 2010); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.849644

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