Image alignment for precise camera fixation and aim

Abstract

Two important problems in camera control are how to keep a moving camera xated on a target point, and how to precisely aim a camera, whose approximate pose is known, towards a given 3D position. This paper describes how electronic image alignment techniques can be used to solve these problems, as well as provide other bene ts such as stabilized video. Hence, stabilized, xated imagery is obtained despite large latencies in the control loop, even for simple control strategies. These techniques have been tested using an airborne camera and real-time a ne image alignment.

Algorithms for cooperative multisensor surveillance

“…This arrangement also allows for many different sensor modalities to be seamlessly integrated into the system. For example, we have integrated color sensors with active pan/tilt/zoom control, fixed field of view monochrome sensors, a Cyclovision omni-directional sensor [26], thermal sensors, a van-mounted relocatable sensor system, an indoor video event detection system developed by Texas Instruments [27] and an airborne sensor platform [28], all using the same communication protocol. We have even prototyped man-portable SPUs that can be placed, calibrated and connected to the system in only a few minutes.…”

“…We believe that having precise knowledge of where objects are in the world, represented in a commonly agreed upon global (in the literal sense of the word) coordinate system, is a significant advantage. For example, this choice has allowed us to easily merge our ground-base surveillance results with hypotheses generated independently by an airborne sensor operated by The Sarnoff Corporation and the U.S. Army's Night Vision and Electronic Sensors Directorate [28], [72]. It also has allowed us to use third-party cartographic software and datasets such as United States Geological Survey maps, orthophotos, DEMS, and road network graphs, in the development of our site model [72].…”

Mobile Robot Localization from Large-Scale Appearance Mosaics

“…Applications include station keeping [41], video coding [23], image stabilization [50], and visualization [42]. Only recently have near real-time [37] and globally consistent [36] mosaicking solutions emerged.…”

Dynamic Stabilization of a Pan and Tilt Camera for Submarine Image Visualization

“…In that case, time processing is of course not critical. In [20], the stabilization is performed online, but necessitates a coarse knowledge of the relative positions of the target and the camera and the learning of eight images of the scene regularly spaced around the point of interest.…”