Inertial navigation sensor integrated obstacle detection system
AssigneeHoneywell Inc.
InventorsBir Bhanu, Barry A. Roberts
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A system that incorporates inertial sensor information into optical flow computations to detect obstacles and to provide alternative navigational paths free from obstacles. The system is a maximally passive obstacle detection system that makes selective use of an active sensor. The active detection typically utilizes a laser. Passive sensor suite includes binocular stereo, motion stereo and variable fields-of-view. Optical flow computations involve extraction, derotation and matching of interest points from sequential frames of imagery, for range interpolation of the sensed scene, which in turn provides obstacle information for purposes of safe navigation.
Claims4
Inertial navigation sensor integrated optical system comprising:
- a scene analysis unit for receiving screen imagery from sensors, and identifying and segmenting features of said imagery;
- an integrated inertial navigation unit for detecting rotational and translational movements of a vehicle;
- and
- an inertial sensor integrated optical flow unit connected to said integrated navigation unit for tracking the features of the scene imagery based on said rotation and translational movements of said vehicle, and to said scene analysis unit, for creating a map based on said scene imagery wherein range values to obstacles are calculated and alternate routes around the obstacles can be determined.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.