Advances in Aerial Image Exploitation

Abstract

The availability of low cost sensors, high bandwidth communication links and the growing popularity of Unmanned Aerial Reconnaissance Platforms like UAVs have resulted in dramatic new opportunities to conduct remote battlefield surveillance and reconnaissance missions from relatively safe Ground Control Stations. The sensors used in UAV explore the visible, infrared and microwave regions of the spectrum and the images are produced optically, electronically or by film. Aerial Image Exploitation is an innovative image utilization program that uses multi sensor, multi resolution and multi spectral imagery obtained from Aerial Reconnaissance Platform for the purpose of Extraction, Exploitation, Dissemination and Interpretation of Imagery Intelligence. Research in aerial image exploitation is focused to provide a total solution of the problem by combining both hardware and software at the system and subsystem level. Major operational goal of image exploitation technology is to extract the vital intelligence from a large storehouse of available imagery by filtering those which are most likely to produce valuable findings, to combine classical image/signal processing techniques with technologies available in other fields and to use specialized hardware wherever required. The first part of the paper describes the Ground Image Exploitation System and Imagery Intelligence Exploitation System being developed in ADE. The second part of the paper describes some of the basic and advanced research work being carried out in ADE, which is the backbone that lead to the development of these systems. Some of the areas discussed in this paper are adaptive preprocessing of imagery, image mosaicing, terrain classification and high-resolution reconstruction of target region.