Application of image processing to land vehicle state vector determination

Image processing techniques are used to determine the range and alignment of a land vehicle. The approach taken is to establish a state vector of quantities derived from an image sequence, and to refine this over the mission. The image processing techniques applied fall into the generic categories of enhancement, detection, segmentation, and classification. Approaches to estimating the alignment and range of a vehicle in computationally efficient ways are presented. The estimates of quantities extracted from single image frames are subject to errors, the authors combine a sequence of uncertain measurements to improve the state estimate. This approach facilitates the integration of results from multiple images, and from multiple sensor systems