Real-time relative mobile target positioning using GPS-assisted stereo videogrammetry

Abstract

Positioning of a GPS-equipped (Global Positioning System) moving target was determined by stereo-videogrammetry from two images of cameras where they were placed on another GPS-equipped moving platform. The computed position outputs of target were compared with the relative positions obtained from two GPS receivers. The target, a small square-like pattern, was tracked from a certain distance depending on the base distance between the cameras. The video files were created from acquired images data. These video files were used in real-time computation to get the target image position for every film frame. First, the location of target was computed within video film frames. Since the target cannot be searched on the whole picture, maximum pixel length, which the target can travel on the consecutive film frames was considered as offset. Therefore, the search was made over a small area rather than whole picture. That was improved the performance of positioning. Finally, videogrammetrically computed coordinates for all epochs were compared with GPS-based relative distances to justify performance of relative target positioning results.