Patent ID: 8577518
Filing Date: 2013-11-05
Classification: G01C,G01S,G03B,H04N

Abstract:
1. An automated airborne video system to support right of way monitoring of a linear ground feature from an aircraft while said aircraft flies along said linear ground feature, comprising: a servo-controlled gyro-stabilized gimbal mount for a camera mounted to said aircraft; a video camera mounted on said gimbal mount; a computer in communication with both said video camera and said servo-controlled gimbal mount; a GPS unit connected to said computer for outputting said aircraft GPS coordinates thereto; a video recorder connected to said video camera; computer memory storing an object geolocation database including at least one ESRI shape file corresponding to said linear ground feature, said ESRI shape file comprising a polyline including a plurality of line segments each represented by a linear vector function, said computer memory also storing software executable by said processor for iteratively calculating closest coordinate points of intersection of lines extending from said GPS receiver to each linear vector function of each of said plurality of line segments of each said polyline and determining Euclidean distance to said closest coordinate points of intersection, and then applying a Dijkstra shortest path function to calculate a selected one of said computed coordinate points of intersection along one of said polyline line segments that minimizes three-dimensional linear distance to the GPS receiver, and said computer memory also storing software executable by said processor for automatically aiming said video camera at each iteratively selected coordinate point in real time and capturing a video record of said extended linear ground feature.