Sangho Ko

Moving Target Indication using an Image Sensor for Small UAVs

Abstract: This paper addresses a Moving Target Indication (MTI) algorithm which can be used for small Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) equipped with image sensors. MTI is a system (or an algorithm) which detects moving objects. The principle of the MTI algorithm is to analyze the difference between successive image data. It is difficult to detect moving objects in the images recorded from dynamic cameras attached to moving platforms such as UAVs flying at low altitudes over a variety of terrain, since the acquired images have two motion components: camera motion and object motion. Therefore, the motion of independent objects can be obtained after the camera motion is compensated thoroughly via proper manipulations. In this study, the camera motion effects are removed by using wiener filter-based image registration, one of the non-parametric methods. In addition, an image pyramid structure is adopted to reduce the computational complexity for UAVs. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our method with experimental results on outdoor video sequences.Keywords: computer vision, image registration, moving target indication, image pyramid structure, small UAVs