Under dynamic conditions, the centroiding accuracy of the motion-blurred star image decreases and the number of identified stars reduces, which leads to the degradation of the attitude accuracy of the star sensor. To improve the attitude accuracy, a region-confined restoration method, which concentrates on the noise removal and signal to noise ratio (SNR) improvement of the motion-blurred star images, is proposed for the star sensor under dynamic conditions. A multi-seed-region growing technique with the kinematic recursive model for star image motion is given to find the star image regions and to remove the noise. Subsequently, a restoration strategy is employed in the extracted regions, taking the time consumption and SNR improvement into consideration simultaneously. Simulation results indicate that the region-confined restoration method is effective in removing noise and improving the centroiding accuracy. The identification rate and the average number of identified stars in the experiments verify the advantages of the region-confined restoration method.
The attitude accuracy of a star sensor decreases rapidly when star images become motion-blurred under dynamic conditions. Existing techniques concentrate on a single frame of star images to solve this problem and improvements are obtained to a certain extent. An attitude-correlated frames (ACF) approach, which concentrates on the features of the attitude transforms of the adjacent star image frames, is proposed to improve upon the existing techniques. The attitude transforms between different star image frames are measured by the strap-down gyro unit precisely. With the ACF method, a much larger star image frame is obtained through the combination of adjacent frames. As a result, the degradation of attitude accuracy caused by motion-blurring are compensated for. The improvement of the attitude accuracy is approximately proportional to the square root of the number of correlated star image frames. Simulations and experimental results indicate that the ACF approach is effective in removing random noises and improving the attitude determination accuracy of the star sensor under highly dynamic conditions.
An optical measurement method, the fold-ray videometrics method, that is applicable to the deformation measurement of large structures is proposed. Through an illustration of ship deformation, the principle of fold-ray videometrics and the composition of the deformation measurement system are introduced. The fold-ray videometrics method is able to transfer or relay three-dimensional geometric information with a fold-ray optical path and thus is capable of real-time measurement of three-dimensional positions, attitudes, and deformations between nonintervisible objects and those of intervisible objects with a very large angle of view. The proposed method therefore has the potential to be applied in deformation measurement of large structures.
When measuring the surface subsidence of unstable areas such as railroad beds and large construction fields, it is not practical to always find stable positions to install measurement instruments. Yet installing those instruments in unstable positions will cause measurement errors or even the complete failure of long-term subsidence surveillance. In this paper, the innovative concept and its method of "displacement-relay videometrics" are proposed. With the method, a double-headed camera is designed, and two constraints, the "fixation constraint" and the "homologous constraint", are established to construct the displacement-relay measurement equations, which can concurrently give the subsidence of the points to be measured and the positions where the cameras are fixed. The method and its measurement system are thus capable of automatically measuring the surface subsidence under the condition that the cameras are mounted on unstable locations over long durations. Therefore, the method has the broad prospect of undertaking automatic, long-term and continuous measurement for surface subsidence in engineering projects such as railroad beds, bridges and the ground beds of tall buildings. The proposed method opens a new area that cameras can be mounted on unstable platform to make high accuracy measurements, which is of great significance for applications. videometrics, displacement relay, subsidence surveillance, series camera network Citation: Yu Q F, Jiang G W, Shang Y, et al. A displacement-relay videometric method for surface subsidence surveillance in unstable areas. Sci China Tech Sci,
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