Mr. Rex M. Craig Profile

Rex M. Craig

at BAE Systems Inc

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Proceedings Article | 21 May 2015 Paper

Real-time full-motion color Flash lidar for target detection and identification

Roy Nelson, Eric Coppock, Rex Craig, Jeremy Craner, Dennis Nicks, Kurt von Niederhausern

Proceedings Volume 9461, 94611R (2015) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2184069

KEYWORDS: LIDAR, Cameras, Clouds, 3D image processing, Sensors, Aerospace engineering, Video, Mid-IR, Data storage, Image resolution

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Greatly improved understanding of areas and objects of interest can be gained when real time, full-motion Flash LiDAR is fused with inertial navigation data and multi-spectral context imagery. On its own, full-motion Flash LiDAR provides the opportunity to exploit the z dimension for improved intelligence vs. 2-D full-motion video (FMV). The intelligence value of this data is enhanced when it is combined with inertial navigation data to produce an extended, georegistered data set suitable for a variety of analysis. Further, when fused with multispectral context imagery the typical point cloud now becomes a rich 3-D scene which is intuitively obvious to the user and allows rapid cognitive analysis with little or no training. Ball Aerospace has developed and demonstrated a real-time, full-motion LIDAR system that fuses context imagery (VIS to MWIR demonstrated) and inertial navigation data in real time, and can stream these information-rich geolocated/fused 3-D scenes from an airborne platform. In addition, since the higher-resolution context camera is boresighted and frame synchronized to the LiDAR camera and the LiDAR camera is an array sensor, techniques have been developed to rapidly interpolate the LIDAR pixel values creating a point cloud that has the same resolution as the context camera, effectively creating a high definition (HD) LiDAR image. This paper presents a design overview of the Ball TotalSight™ LIDAR system along with typical results over urban and rural areas collected from both rotary and fixed-wing aircraft. We conclude with a discussion of future work.

Proceedings Article | 3 May 2007 Paper

Processing 3D flash LADAR point-clouds in real-time for flight applications

R. Craig, I. Gravseth, R. Earhart, J. Bladt, S. Barnhill, L. Ruppert, C. Centamore

Proceedings Volume 6555, 65550D (2007) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.720143

KEYWORDS: LIDAR, Sensors, 3D image processing, Video, Field programmable gate arrays, 3D acquisition, Prototyping, Staring arrays, Automatic target recognition, Electronics

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Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. has demonstrated real-time processing of 3D imaging LADAR point-cloud data to produce the industry's first time-of-flight (TOF) 3D video capability. This capability is uniquely suited to the rigorous demands of space and airborne flight applications and holds great promise in the area of autonomous navigation. It will provide long-range, three dimensional video information to autonomous flight software or pilots for immediate use in rendezvous and docking, proximity operations, landing, surface vision systems, and automatic target recognition and tracking. This is enabled by our new generation of FPGA based "pixel-tube" processors, coprocessors and their associated algorithms which have led to a number of advancements in high-speed wavefront processing along with additional advances in dynamic camera control, and space laser designs based on Ball's CALIPSO LIDAR. This evolution in LADAR is made possible by moving the mechanical complexity required for a scanning system into the electronics, where production, integration, testing and life-cycle costs can be significantly reduced. This technique requires a state of the art TOF read-out integrated circuit (ROIC) attached to a sensor array to collect high resolution temporal data, which is then processed through FPGAs. The number of calculations required to process the data is greatly reduced thanks to the fact that all points are captured at the same time and thus correlated. This correlation allows extremely efficient FPGA processing. This capability has been demonstrated in prototype form at both Marshal Space Flight Center and Langley Research Center on targets that represent docking and landing scenarios. This report outlines many aspects of this work as well as aspects of our recent testing at Marshall's Flight Robotics Laboratory.

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