Apparatus for detecting an altitude of a flying object

Abstract: A three-dimensional image of a ground surface taken by a stereoscopic camera (10) is converted to a distance image in a stereoscopic processing section (30). In an altitude calculating section (40), after peculiar points contained in the distance image are deleted and further the lens distortion is deleted from the distance image, the distance image is transferred to a real space coordinate. Then, an equation approximating to a plane is obtained from data of the distance image and a length of a perpendicular line to the plane is calculated as a ground altitude.

Description: The present invention relates to an apparatus for detecting an altitude of a flying object, particularly to an apparatus for detecting an altitude of an aircraft flying at a low altitude. For the purpose of the present invention the term altitude has the particular meaning of the height of the flying object above the ground and not necessarily the height above sea level. When a flying object flies at a low altitude, or when it takes off or lands, an altimeter is an essential apparatus. Recently, a technique of spraying agricultural chemicals by means of a flying object such as an unmanned helicopter has become practical. There are two ways of controlling the unmanned helicopter. The first way is by remote control in which an operator controls the helicopter by radio in response to visual observation. The second is an autonomous control in which the helicopter flies and/or lands autonomously without the guidance of an operator. Remote radio control demands a high degree of skill of the operator to monitor the altitude of the helicopter by eye and to land safely. Because the object of using the unmanned helicopter is to save labour, it is desirable that the unmanned helicopter is autonomously controlled so that an operator is not continuously occupied by the task of guidance as with the first radio control. For the autonomously controlled type of unmanned helicopter, an altimeter offering high precision altitude data is indispensable. There are many kinds of altimeters including an altimeter in which altitude is determined by transforming the difference of atmospheric pressure into altitude, an altimeter in which an altitude is calculated from the time taken for a reflection of a laser beam, radio wave, sonic wave or the like transmitted towards the ground to be received, an altimeter in which an altitude is found based on positional information transmitted from positioning satellites such as D-GPS, an altimeter in which an altitude is obtained from acceleration. Taking accuracy, a reflecting characteristic of object on ground, (the terrain over which the altimeter is to be used), the environment in which the altimeter is used (the atmospheric conditions), and other factors into consideration, the various types of altimeters have advantages and disadvantages. Known altimeters do not perform entirely satisfactorily in the conditions experienced by a flying object flying at low altitude. In order to perform satisfactorily it is particularly important that the altimeter is not adversely influenced by the reflecting characteristics of an object on the ground. With this in mind, a technique in which an altitude is measured by processing images taken by cameras from the flying object is most promising. A prior art example of a technique of detecting altitude from images is disclosed in Japanese Patent Application No. Toku-Kai-Shou 62-88914. In this prior art, altitude is obtained based on the comparison of the movement of an object in an image area with an actual distance to that area. However, because the actual distance to the image area must be known, a map including the image area is needed and also a specified mark must be imaged in the area. Further, an angle of depression with respect to the centre of the field of view must be known and this angle of depression is measured indirectly by a gyro compass or like instrument and accuracy is therefore unsatisfactory. It is an object of the present invention to provide an apparatus for detecting an altitude capable of accurately detecting an altitude of a flying object which alleviates the disadvantages of the prior art. Accordingly the present invention provides apparatus for detecting an altitude of a flying object flying at low altitude comprising a pair of stereoscopic cameras mounted on said flying object for taking a stereoscopic image of a ground surface under the flying object, a stereoscopic processing section for processing a pair of images imaged by the cameras and for calculating a distance data of the ground surface, and an altitude calculating section for creating a configuration of the ground surface based on the distance data of a plurality of measuring points on the ground surface so as to calculate an altitude of the flying object to the ground surface. An apparatus for detecting the altitude of a flying object embodying the present invention will now be described, by way of example only, with reference to the accompanying figures, in which: Figure. 1 is a schematic block diagram of an apparatus for detecting an altitude; Figure. 2 is a flowchart showing a process for deleting peculiar points; Figure. 3 is a flowchart showing a process for calculating an altitude; Figure. 4a shows a distance image on a coordinate having a horizontal axis I and a vertical axis j; and Figure. 4b shows a series of distance data expressed in a real space coordinate having a horizontal axis X showing a horizontal position and a longitudinal axis Z showing a distance. Figure. 1 shows a construction of an apparatus for detecting an altitude mounted on a flying object such as a helicopter which flies at a low altitude. The apparatus comprises a pair of stereoscopic cameras 10 for taking a three-dimensional image of a scene below the flying object, an image input section 20 to implement an input process of the image taken by the cameras 10, an original image memory 25 for storing an image processed in the image input section 20 as an original image, a stereoscopic processing section 30 for producing distance distribution information (distance image) from the original image by stereo-matching, a distance image memory 35 for storing the distance image, and an altitude calculating section 40 for calculating a ground altitude from distance information of a plurality of detecting points. Each stereoscopic camera 10 comprises two CCD cameras 10a, 10b which operate synchronously with each other and whose shutter speeds are variably controlled. One CCD camera 10a is used as a primary camera for imaging a reference image and the other CCD camera 10b is used as a subsidiary camera for imaging a comparison image, Further, these two cameras are disposed with a specified base length and their optical axes are arranged in parallel with each other. The image input section 20 comprises an analogue interface having a gain control amplifier, an A/D converter for converting analogue data from the CCD cameras 10a, 10b into digital image data and a high integrated FPGA (Flexible Programmable Gate Array) having miscellaneous image processing functions such as a LOG conversion table to make a logarithmic conversion with respect to bright and shadow portions of image. That is to say, in the image input section 20, after inputting image signals from the CCD cameras 10a, 10b in order by a gain adjustment, image corrections such as improving contrasts of low brightness portions by the LOG conversion are performed and then thus corrected image signals are converted into digital image data having a given brightness. After that, those image signals are sent to the original image memory 25 for storing. The stereoscopic processing section 30 is constituted of a high integrated FPGA containing a city-block distance calculating circuit, a deviation detecting circuit and the like. With respect to two images stored in the original image memory 25, the reference image and the comparison image, the stereo matching is performed for each small region of respective two images to obtain three-dimensional image information (distance images) expressed in numbers. That is, in the city-block distance calculating circuit, a city-block distance between a small region of the reference image and a corresponding small region of the comparison image is calculated and then in the deviation detecting circuit, it is checked whether or not these two small regions agree by evaluating minimum and maximum values of the calculated city-block distance. If this checking condition is satisfied and the city-block distance becomes minimum, the deviation amount of picture element at this moment is a distance information of the subject small region of the reference image. Thus obtained distance information is stored in the distance image memory 35. Detailed processes of the stereo matching are described in Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. Toku-Kai-Hei 5-114099 filed by the applicant of the present invention. The altitude calculating section 40 is constituted of an RISC processor and the like. The RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computer) processor performs a recognition process at high speeds based on the distance distribution information obtained from the distance image. That is, in the altitude calculating section 40, assuming a plane or a curved surface from distance information of many points on the ground, the length of a perpendicular line ( or possibly a vertical line ) from the flying object to the plane or the curved surface is defined to be a ground altitude. In this embodiment, the ground surface is detected as a plane from the distance information of multiple points on the ground and the length of a perpendicular line from the flying object down to that plane is obtained as a ground altitude. In order to speed up the calculation, the processes are substantially simplified. Further, since the distances to multiple points in the image are measured and these distance information is used for calculation, not only a plane but also an up-and-down surface, a stairs-like terrain or the like, can be recognised over the wide range with good accuracy. Next, a process of calculating an altitude in the altitude calculating section 40 will be described with reference to flowcharts shown in Figs. 2 and 3. Generally, in case where the ground surface is detected as a plane from the distance information of multiple points, if distance information not constituting the plane is contained therein, this information has a large effect on the detection of altitude. In case where noises or projection-like objects are detected, these noises or objects are expressed as peculiar points having apparently different values from other coherent points. Therefore, according to the process of deleting peculiar points in this embodiment, first these peculiar points are deleted from the distance image and further when the coordinate system is transformed from the image space to the actual space, the distance data belonging to different series of distance data are deleted. Using the distance data from which the peculiar points are deleted, a plane is created from the distance data of multiple points in the real space coordinate system. Specifically, in the flowchart shown in Figure. 2, at a step S1100 the distance image is read and peculiar points whose values are largely apart from the value of maximum frequency are deleted from the overall distance image. The process at this step S100 is a preprocess for securing an uneven-data deleting filter process which will be described hereinafter at a step S400. In case of the distance image having a picture size composed of 400 (laterally) x 200 (longitudinally)picture elements, for example this distance image is divided into small regions or blocks having a distance data (deviation amount of picture element),each of which is composed of 8 (lateral) x 4 (longitudinal) picture elements. Furthermore, this distance image is divided into 25 medium regions each of which is composed of 80 (lateral) x 40 (longitudinal) picture elements. Respective medium regions include 100 (10 x 10) small regions and a histogram of deviation amount is prepared for these respective medium regions. When compared with the distance data having a maximum frequency in this histogram, if the distance data exceed a specified range (+ 1 of the distance data of the maximum frequency), the deviation amount of the block is let null to delete this peculiar point. Then, the program goes to a step S200 where a plurality of sampled regions are selected in the distance image and the position of the sampled regions on the image surface is corrected to the position having no distortion of a lens. For example, 357 blocks of small region composed of 8 (lateral) x 4 (longitudinal) are selected from the image, that is, laterally 21 blocks for every 16 picture elements and longitudinally 17 blocks for every 8 picture elements. A distance R between the position of the distance image and a point of intersection of the optical axis and the image surface is corrected according to a correction value D expressed in the following formula (1). D = A.R 5 + B.R 3 + C.R where A, B and C are correction coefficients determined by lens manufacturers or by experiments. Then, at a step S300 a three-dimensional coordinate of respective sampled small regions in the real space is obtained from the corrected position and the distance data of each sampled region on the CCD surface. Further, at a step S400 an uneven-plane deleting filter process for deleting picture elements not constituting the plane from the distance image is performed. In this process, as shown in Figs. 4a and 4b, taking a note of a line on the image coordinate (I axis laterally, j axis vertically), a series of data is obtained on the real space coordinate (X axis laterally, Z axis longitudinally). Then, this series of data is approximated to a linear equation according to the least square method, as shown in Figure. 4b. At this time, only data within a specified range (shown by slashes) are used for obtaining a plane and data out of the specified range are deleted. This process is repeated by scanning from top to down to delete the distance information not constituting a plane as peculiar points from the distance image. Then, after deleting the irrespective distance information, an altitude calculating process is performed as shown in a flowchart of Figure. 3. First, at a step S500 an equation of plane as shown in the following equation (2) is established based on groups of data of coordinates (X, Y, Z) transformed from the image space into the real space by use of the least square method. ax + by + cz = 1 Next, solving the matrix equations, respective coefficients a, b and c are obtained. Then, the program goes to a step S600 where the length h of the perpendicular line from the camera to the plane is obtained according to the following formula (3). This length h is a ground altitude. h = 1 / (a 2 + b 2 + c 2 ) ½

Claims: An altitude detecting apparatus for detecting an altitude of a flying object comprising: a stereoscopic camera (10) mounted on said flying object for taking a stereoscopic image of a ground surface under said flying object; a stereoscopic processing section (30) for processing a pair of images imaged by said stereoscopic camera (10) and for calculating distance data of said ground surface; and an altitude calculating section (40) for creating a configuration of said ground surface based on said distance data of a plurality of measuring points on said ground surface so as to calculate an altitude of said flying object to said ground surface. Apparatus according to claim 1 wherein the stereoscopic camera (10) comprises two cameras (10a, 10b). Apparatus according to any one of the preceding claims, comprising: correcting means for correcting distortion of lenses of said cameras (10) so as to make said distance data more accurate. Apparatus according to any one of the preceding claims, wherein said altitude calculating section (40) creates a plane from said configuration of said ground surface and calculates a length of a perpendicular line to said plane as an altitude of said flying object. Apparatus according to claim 4, comprising: distance data deleting means for approximating a series of said distance data to a straight line and for deleting said distance data out of a specified range established around said straight line as a distance data not constituting said plane. A method for determining the altitude of a low flying object comprising : acquiring a reference image of a ground surface from a primary camera (10a) in a stereoscopic camera (10) and a comparison image of said ground surface from a subsidiary camera (10b) mounted on said flying object, performing stereo matching of each of several regions of each image to obtain distance data of the distance of the subject region, creating a configuration of said ground surface based on said distance data of a plurality of measuring points on said ground surface, deriving the perpendicular distance of the flying object to said configuration. A method according to claim 6 wherein a nominal surface consisting of a plane surface or a simple curved surface is fitted to said ground surface. A method according to claim 7 wherein distance data not fitting said ground surface is defined as a peculiar point, and said peculiar points are deleted from said ground surface. A method according to any one of claims 6-8 comprising correcting the distortion caused by the camera lens from the distance image.

Inventors: SANEYOSHI KEIJI, TSUCHIYA HIDEAKI, SANEYOSHI, KEIJI, TSUCHIYA, HIDEAKI
Applicants: FUJI HEAVY IND LTD, FUJI JUKOGYO KABUSHIKI KAISHA
Application year: 1999
Main classification: G01C11
IPC codes: H04N13, G01C11, G01C3, G06T1, G01C5