William C. Choate

Method for inferring sensor attitude through multifeature tracking

This paper describes an algorithm for determining the attitude (yaw, pitch, and roll) of an imaging sensor relative to its attitude at a reference time. Inputs are images at the two times and relative sensor position. We assume the latter is provided by an inertial navigation system (INS) or other source. The algorithm was developed to meet the needs of passive ranging where accurate estimates of attitude are crucial to performance and are difficult to obtain, particularly when the sensor and INS are not co-located. On the other hand, it is not difficult to obtain estimates of relative motion to the required accuracy.