Application Of Image Understanding To Automatic Tactical Target Acquisition

Real-time equipment has been developed and is now being tested for automatic recognition of targets on an individual basis. The recent use of frame-to-frame integration techniques has significantly improved the classification performance with this equipment to the point where the human interpreter can sometimes be surpassed. For some imagery, however, initial target segmentation remains unsatisfactory, causing targets to be missed, and the level of false alarms may be too high. As a result, more sophisticated image processing techniques are now being addressed which could provide a comprehensive understanding of overall image content. These include the use of such scene analysis operations as the derivation of motion vectors for passive ranging, false alarm discrimination, and detection of target motion. Additional areas of interest lie in the "intelligent" tracking of multiple targets, and the autonomous handoff of targets between sensors. The paper discusses the evolution of these areas, and their probable impact on the target acquisition process. It also addresses their impact on hardware implementation.