Automatic target tracking on multi-resolution terrain

Abstract

We propose a high-performance path planning algorithm for automatic target tracking in the applications of real-time simulation and visualization of large-scale terrain datasets, with a large number of moving objects (such as vehicles) tracking multiple moving targets. By using a modified Dijkstra’s algorithm, an optimal path between each vehicle-target pair over a weighted grid-presented terrain is computed and updated to eliminate the problem of local minima and losing of tracking. Then, a dynamic path re-planning strategy using multi-resolution representation of a dynamic updating region is proposed to achieve high-performance by trading-off precision for efficiency, while guaranteeing accuracy. Primary experimental results showed that our algorithm successfully achieved 10 to 96 frames per second interactive path-replanning rates during a terrain simulation scenario with 10 to 100 vehicles and multiple moving targets.