Learning based system and method for visual docking guidance to detect new approaching aircraft types

A method for aircraft detection, comprising:

• receiving camera image data of an aircraft and a scene having a number of non-aircraft elements within a field of view of a camera while the aircraft is approaching or in a bridge area of an airport;
• removing the aircraft from the scene;
• capturing camera image data of a new aircraft;
• generating a segmented aircraft mask;
• segmenting the image data of the new aircraft into body part segmentation data;
• classifying the body part segmentation data into a plurality of classes;
• analyzing each class of body part segmentation data to predict an aircraft type for the new aircraft;
• determining the aircraft type of the new aircraft based on the prediction analysis;
• and
• generating aircraft specific docking guidance for the new aircraft based on the determined aircraft type.

A method for generating a synthetic aircraft model, comprising:

• receiving camera image data of a scene having an existing aircraft and a number of non-aircraft elements within a field of view of a camera while the existing aircraft is approaching or in a bridge area of an airport;
• analyzing the camera image data of the existing aircraft to determine an aircraft type;
• determining a plurality of aircraft feature parameters;
• applying the plurality of aircraft feature parameters to a 3D new aircraft model;
• generating a 2D projection of the 3D new aircraft model;
• removing the existing aircraft from the scene in the camera image data leaving just the non-aircraft elements;
• merging the scene having just the non-aircraft elements and the 2D projection of the new aircraft to create a synthetic image of the new aircraft approaching or in the bridge area of the airport.