Evaluation of a Laboratory Automatic Target Recognition system: Air-to-Sea Image Sequence.

Abstract

The operation and evaluation of a laboratory automatic target recognition (ATR) system is described. The ATR system was evaluated against its ability to acquire and track a specific target in the presence of false targets and background clutter. A ten second air-to-sea image sequence that contained the infrared signatures of three ship targets and sea clutter was used as the test sequence. The evaluation involved assessing the system performance with default values for various system parameters. These were then varied and the effect on system performance measured. The ability to acquire and track the true target over a limited range of target orientations and in the presence of low clutter and false targets was demonstrated. Furthermore, it was found that acquisition was easier if the target was somewhat broadside rather than end-on to the sensor. A shortcoming of the system was that it was not robust to minimal target obscuration. In addition, its ability to discriminate between the true and false targets was somewhat limited, and resulted in the acquisition and tracking of false targets. The evaluation showed that the system discrimination was improved by optimization of a number of parameters, however, this also resulted in a reduction of its ability to acquire and track the true target. In addition, those parameters that were most important in terms of their effect on the system performance.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Feb 01, 1997
Accession Number
ADA327842

Entities

People

  • Mike Royce
  • Paul Miller
  • Peter Virgo
  • Steve Angeli

Organizations

  • Defence Science and Technology Group

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Air Platforms
  • Ground and Sea Platforms
  • Sensors
  • Weapons Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Algorithms
  • Central Processing Units
  • Correlators
  • Detection
  • Detectors
  • Engineering
  • Image Processing
  • Images
  • Infrared Detectors
  • Optical Correlators
  • Optical Processing
  • Statistical Analysis
  • Target Acquisition
  • Target Recognition
  • Target Signatures
  • Test And Evaluation
  • Training

Readers

  • Acoustical Oceanography.
  • Computer Science/Computer Engineering/Data Science/Digital Signal Processing.
  • Marksmanship and Weaponry.