Optical Flow-Based State Estimation for Guided Projectiles
Moshe Hamaoui · 2015
Abstract : Optical flow-based state estimation could significantly enhance the scope and performance of future guided projectiles by mitigating reliance on Global Positioning Systems (GPS) and augmenting traditional inertial measurement units and other navigational sensors. The goal of this work is to specialize and apply the theory of optical flow geometry to projectile vision-based navigation. This report describes the construction of an optical flow (OF) simulation tool for projectile flight and presents the equations and constraints relating OF to projectile motion. Specifically, the differential epipolar constraint is used to recover the body-fixed translational velocity vector (up to scale) and angular rates from the projected flow field. Finally, an example simulation is presented wherein we generate vehicle state and OF ground truth histories, corresponding synthetic video sequence, measured OF, and state estimation history.