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Horizon Profile Detection for Attitude Determination

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Abstract

The horizon appearance is a strong visual indication of the attitude of an aircraft, so a vision based system should be able to detect the horizon and use its appearance to extract attitude measurements. Past methods have made the assumption that the horizon is straight, this neglects possible navigational and attitude information. This paper outlines a horizon detection method which allows for the actual horizon profile shape to be extracted. This horizon profile is then used for visual attitude determination. Test results for a captured flight video are presented and the proposed method is compared and evaluated against other methods.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia

    Steven J. Dumble & Peter W. Gibbens

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  1. Steven J. Dumble
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  2. Peter W. Gibbens
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Correspondence to Steven J. Dumble.

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Dumble, S.J., Gibbens, P.W. Horizon Profile Detection for Attitude Determination. J Intell Robot Syst 68, 339–357 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10846-012-9684-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10846-012-9684-7

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