AUTONOMOUS TRACKING SYSTEM FOR AIRPORT LIGHTING QUALITY CONTROL

J. H. Niblock, K. McMenemy, S. Ferguson, J. X. Peng

2007

Abstract

The central aim of this research is to develop an an autonomous measurement system for assessing the performance of an airport lighting pattern. The system improves safety with regard to aircraft landing procedures by ensuring the airport lighting is properly maintained and conforms to current standards and recommendations laid down by the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO). A vision system, mounted in the cockpit of an aircraft, is capable of capturing sequences of airport lighting images during a normal approach to an aerodrome. These images are post-processeda to determine the grey level of the approach lighting pattern (ALP). In this paper, two tracking algorithms are presented which can detect and track individual luminaires throughout the complete image sequence. The effective tracking of the luminaires is central to the long term goal of this research, which is to assess the performance of the luminaires’ from the recorded grey level data extracted for each detected luminaire. The two algorithms presented are the Niblock-McMenemy (NM) feature tracking algorithm has been optimised for the specific task of airport lighting and to assess its effectiveness it has been compared to the Kanade-Lucus-Tomasi (KLT) feature tracking algorithm. In order to validate both algorithms a synthetic 3D model of the ALP is presented. To further assess the robustness of the algorithms results from an actual approach to a UK aerodromeb are presented. The results show that although both KLT and NM feature trackers are both effective in tracking airport lighting the NM algorithm is better suited to the task due to its reliable grey level information. Limitations, such as the static window size, of the KLT algorithm result in a lossy grey level data and hence lead to inaccurate results.

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Paper Citation


in Harvard Style

H. Niblock J., McMenemy K., Ferguson S. and X. Peng J. (2007). AUTONOMOUS TRACKING SYSTEM FOR AIRPORT LIGHTING QUALITY CONTROL . In Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Computer Vision Theory and Applications - Volume 2: VISAPP, ISBN 978-972-8865-74-0, pages 317-324. DOI: 10.5220/0002039903170324


in Bibtex Style

@conference{visapp07,
author={J. H. Niblock and K. McMenemy and S. Ferguson and J. X. Peng},
title={AUTONOMOUS TRACKING SYSTEM FOR AIRPORT LIGHTING QUALITY CONTROL},
booktitle={Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Computer Vision Theory and Applications - Volume 2: VISAPP,},
year={2007},
pages={317-324},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0002039903170324},
isbn={978-972-8865-74-0},
}


in EndNote Style

TY - CONF
JO - Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Computer Vision Theory and Applications - Volume 2: VISAPP,
TI - AUTONOMOUS TRACKING SYSTEM FOR AIRPORT LIGHTING QUALITY CONTROL
SN - 978-972-8865-74-0
AU - H. Niblock J.
AU - McMenemy K.
AU - Ferguson S.
AU - X. Peng J.
PY - 2007
SP - 317
EP - 324
DO - 10.5220/0002039903170324