Typical targets to be detected in ground surveillance scenarios have two common properties that are physically distinct, motion and radiation. This applies to pedestrians, vehicles, trucks and light aircraft. Infrared sensors can be used for the detection of radiating bodies through the application of image processing techniques and Doppler radar is an excellent detector of radial body motion. RAPTOR is a system whose aim is to produce a ground surveillance device with higher detection performance and lower false and nuisance alarm rates than possible with either or both sensor types operating alone. RAPTOR combines two complementary sensors, an infrared imager and a pulsed Doppler radar, which automatically detect targets using different physical phenomena and then uses data fusion techniques to enhance the automatic target detection performance. The fusion process includes alignment, correlation, association, target data processing and multisensor management. RAPTOR uses the two sensors in parallel, bore sighted on a single rotational platform. Both sensors concurrently scan the spatial volume and the individual target detection results, 'soft-targets,' are combined using data fusion algorithms to generate a confirmed set of targets, 'hard-targets.'

Date Published: 8 September 1995
PDF: 12 pages
Proc. SPIE 2552, Infrared Technology XXI, (8 September 1995); doi: 10.1117/12.218291

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 2552:
Infrared Technology XXI
Bjorn F. Andresen; Marija Strojnik, Editor(s)