Coordinating image sensing with motion

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-9781378-B2
Application number	US-201414481647-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Sep 9, 2014
Priority date	Sep 9, 2014
Publication date	Oct 3, 2017
Grant date	Oct 3, 2017

Abstract

A method may include generating one or more control signals configured to control a velocity of an image sensing system based on a rate of recording pixels frames in the image sensing system. In some embodiments, the method may alternatively or additionally include generating one or more control signals configured to control the rate of recording in the image sensing system based on the velocity of the image sensing system. In some embodiments, a portion of image pixel data for a pixel frame may be output for transmission to a remote receiver. In some embodiments, the output data may include a recently recorded image data pixel for those surface resolution cells for which there is no currently stored reference image data pixel of a previously recorded pixel frame that is the same or is different by less than a threshold amount as the recently recorded image data pixel.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A method comprising:
generating one or more control signals configured to control an along-track velocity of an image sensing system moving in a direction of travel along a surface being imaged based on a rate of recording pixel frames in the image sensing system;
the image sensing system including one or more sensor elements for recording a pixel frame including at least M adjacent rows each having at least one image data pixel, with each image data pixel corresponding to a surface resolution cell of the surface determined by an instantaneous field of view of the surface by the associated sensor element, with the M rows disposed along the direction of travel, where M is an integer greater than one, and each surface resolution cell has an along-track dimension in the direction of travel, and wherein generating one or more control signals configured to control the along-track velocity includes generating the one or more control signals configured to control the along-track velocity such that each recording interval of time associated with recording of the pixel frames is within a threshold amount of time equal to m multiplied by a time it takes for the image sensing system to move the along-track dimension relative to the surface, where m is a positive integer less than M; and
outputting to a transmitter for transmission as base image data to a receiver that is remote from the image sensing system, a recorded image data pixel for each surface resolution cell from at least one recorded pixel frame and less than a number of recorded pixel frames that is equal to the highest integer less than M/m.

2. The method of claim 1 , further comprising generating one or more control signals configured to control the rate of recording pixel frames in the image sensing system based on the velocity of the image sensing system.

3. The method of claim 2 further comprising:
comparing, for each surface resolution cell for which base image data has been output, a recently recorded image data pixel with a previously recorded image data pixel, and outputting the recently recorded image data pixel to the transmitter for transmission to the receiver as change image data when the recently recorded image data pixel is different than the previously recorded image data pixel by at least a threshold amount.

4. The method of claim 2 , wherein generating the one or more control signals configured to control the along-track velocity includes generating one or more control signals associated with one or more of controlling the along-track velocity and controlling the rate of recording pixel frames.

5. The method of claim 1 , further comprising generating one or more control signals configured to control a distance of the image sensing system from a surface being imaged by the image sensing system.

6. The method of claim 1 , wherein outputting as base image data the recorded image data pixel for each cell includes outputting as base image data the recorded image data pixel for the surface resolution cell only one time.

7. The method of claim 6 , wherein for each surface resolution cell, outputting as base image data, a recorded image data pixel includes outputting to the transmitter for transmission as base image data to the receiver, the recorded image data pixels corresponding to the first m rows of recorded image data pixels in the direction of travel.

8. The method of claim 1 further comprising, prior to generating the one or more control signals, determining the along-track velocity and an altitude of the image sensing system relative to the surface of the earth using a satellite navigation system.

9. The method of claim 8 , further comprising determining an orientation of the image sensing system relative to a nadir, determining a surface resolution cell size on the surface of the earth based at least in part on the determined altitude and image sensing system orientation, and determining the time it takes for the image sensing system to move the along-track dimension relative to the surface based at least in part on the determined along-track velocity and surface resolution cell size.

10. The method of claim 9 , further comprising comparing, for each surface resolution cell for which base image data has been output to the transmitter for transmission to the receiver, a recently recorded image data pixel with a previously output base or change image data, and outputting to the transmitter for transmission to the receiver as change image data the recently recorded image data pixel only if the recently recorded image data pixel is different than the previously recorded image data pixel by at least a threshold amount.

11. A method comprising generating one or more control signals configured to control a rate of recording pixel frames in an image sensing system based on an along-track velocity of the image sensing system moving in a direction of travel relative to a surface being imaged that is spaced from the image sensing system, the image sensing system including one or more sensor elements for recording a pixel frame including at least M adjacent rows each having at least one image data pixel, with each image data pixel corresponding to a surface resolution cell of the surface determined by an instantaneous field of view of the surface by the associated sensor element, with the M rows disposed along the direction of travel, where M is an integer greater than one, and each surface resolution cell has an along-track dimension in the direction of travel, and wherein generating one or more control signals is configured such that each recording interval of time associated with recording of the pixel frames is within a threshold amount of time equal to m multiplied by a time it takes for the image sensing system to move the along-track dimension relative to the surface, where m is a positive integer less than M, the method further comprising outputting to a transmitter for transmission as base image data to a receiver that is remote from the image sensing system, a recorded image data pixel for each surface resolution cell from at least one recorded pixel frame and less than a number of recorded pixel frames that is equal to the highest integer less than M/m.

12. A controller comprising:
a control component configured to be operatively coupled to an image sensing system, the image sensing system being supported by a platform disposed in spaced relationship from and moving in a direction of travel relative to a surface, the image sensing system having one or more sensor elements for producing one or more sets of pixel frames, where each pixel frame includes at least M adjacent rows each having at least one image data pixel, each image data pixel corresponding to a surface resolution cell of the surface determined by an instantaneous field of view of the surface by the associated sensor element, the M rows being disposed along the direction of travel, M being an integer greater than one, and each surface resolution cell having an along-track dimension in the direction of travel, the control component being configured to generate one or more control signals for controlling one or more of (a) an along-track velocity of the image sensing system moving in the travel direction relative to the surface, (b) a distance of the image sensing system from the surface, and (c) a rate of recording the pixel frames, such that each recording interval of time associated with recording of the pixel frames is within a threshold amount of time equal to m multiplied by a time it takes for the image sensing system to move the along-track dimension relative to the surface, where m is a positive integer less than M; and
an output com

Assignees

• Boeing Co

Inventors

• Howe Wayne R

Classifications

• H04N25/46

  by combining or binning pixels · CPC title

• H04N25/441 Primary

  by reading contiguous pixels from selected rows or columns of the array, e.g. interlaced scanning · CPC title

• H04N25/40

  Extracting pixel data from image sensors by controlling scanning circuits, e.g. by modifying the number of pixels sampled or to be sampled · CPC title

• B64U10/00

  Type of UAV · CPC title

• H04N9/8042

  involving data reduction · CPC title