Placement of Full Motion Video (FMV) frames in geographic context using pursuer

When viewing full motion video (FMV) from an unmanned aerial vehicle, the "context" of the video (the location and orientation of objects within the video) is often as important to the end-user as the video itself. To provide context to video being collected in real-time, we have developed a system for placing frames from a FMV stream in a geographic context. As a visualization platform, we utilize Pursuer, a US Air Force "government-o-the- shelf" system based on NASA's World Wind software package. Pursuer provides an intuitive interface for viewing several dierent layers of imagery, including pre-existing maps, reference imagery, and recently collected imagery, all placed within geographical context (similar to Google Earth). The focus of this paper is the technology developed for creating a Pursuer layer for FMV streams. We present results obtained from small UAV ights in Florida and New York and discuss needed future improvements.