Infrared small target's detection and identification with moving platform based on motion features

Abstract

The infrared small target’s detection and tracking are important parts of the automatic target recognition. When the camera platform equipped with an infrared camera moves, the small target’s position change in the imaging plane is affected by the composite motion of the small target and the camera platform. Traditional detection and tracking algorithms may lose the small target and make the follow-up detection and tracking fail because of not considering the camera platform’s movement. Moreover, when there exist small targets with different motion features in the camera’s view, some detection and tracking algorithms can’t recognize different targets based on their motion features because there are no trajectories in a unified coordinate system, which may lead to the true small targets undetected or detected incorrectly . To solve those problems, we present a method under the condition of moving camera platform. Firstly, get the camera platform’s motion information from the inertial measurement values, and then decouple to remove the motion of the camera platform itself by means of coordinate transformation. Next, estimate the trajectories of the small targets with different motion features based on their position changes in the same imaging plane coordinate system. Finally, recognize different small targets preliminarily based on their different trajectories. Experimental results show that this method can improve the small target’s detection probability. Furthermore, when the camera platform fails to track the small target, it’s possible to predict the position of the small target in the next frame based on the fitted motion equation and realize sustained and stable tracking.