Scene matching, by a human, is done by mentally registering the two images at a trial match position. If the observed residual match errors are consistent with the type of match errors known (by a priori experience) to occur, then the trial match is judged to be the true-match position. This approach has not been possible in autonomous scene-matching because there has been no way to exactly register the two images. Unless this is done, the true match-errors (the likelihood of which can be judged against a priori knowledge) are completely swamped by spurious match-errors due to, even slight, residual mis-registration (rotation, scale-schange, aspect, etc.). In this paper it is shown how a new process, that automatically registers the two images, could be applied in an autonomous version of the human scene-matching technique. This technique would be particularly appropriate when the match is difficult because, for example, the reference is a cartoon-like synthetic image, the scene content is unfavorable for the easy extraction of gross features, the acquisition basket is large, the sensed image quality is poor due to bad weather, etc.

Date Published: 23 December 1980
PDF: 12 pages
Proc. SPIE 0238, Image Processing for Missile Guidance, (23 December 1980); doi: 10.1117/12.959143

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 0238:
Image Processing for Missile Guidance
Thomas F. Wiener, Editor(s)