Mr. Charles A. McPherson Profile

Charles A. McPherson

Staff at Draper Lab

SPIE Involvement:

Author

Proceedings Article | 13 May 2019 Presentation + Paper

Modeling and assessing VNIIRS using in-scene metrics

John Irvine, Charles McPherson, Andrew Kalukin, Gary Takis, James Miller

Proceedings Volume 10992, 1099205 (2019) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2520090

KEYWORDS: Signal to noise ratio, Video, Image quality, Sensors, Image sensors, Image quality standards, Image analysis, Smoothing, Image acquisition, Cameras

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Proceedings Article | 23 January 2012 Paper

Activity recognition from video using layered approach

Charles McPherson, John Irvine, Mon Young, Anthony Stefanidis

Proceedings Volume 8301, 83010S (2012) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.909585

KEYWORDS: Video, Video surveillance, Kinematics, Defense and security, Logic, Detection and tracking algorithms, Surveillance, Video processing, Data modeling, Computer security

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Proceedings Article | 10 September 2007 Paper

Visual navigation aid for planetary UAV risk reduction

C. McPherson, M. Bottkol, R. Madison, P. DeBitetto, M. Young

Proceedings Volume 6764, 67640Q (2007) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.734346

KEYWORDS: Image processing, Navigation systems, Cameras, Visualization, Distortion, Image filtering, Feature selection, Sensors, Radar, Imaging systems

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Unlike the navigation problem of Earth operations, the precise navigation of a vehicle in a remote planetary environment presents a challenging problem for either absolute or relative navigation. There exist no GPS/INS solutions due to a lack of a GPS constellation, few or no accurately surveyed markers for use in terminal sensing measurements, and highly uncertain terrain elevation maps used by a TERCOM system. These, and other, issues prompted the investigation of the potential use of a visual navigation aid to supplement an Inertial Navigation System (INS) and radar altimeter suite of a planetary airplane for the purpose of the identifying the potential benefit of visual measurements to the overall navigation solution. The mission objective used in the study, described herein, requires the precise relative navigation of the airplane over an uncertain terrain. Unlike the previously successful employment of visual aided navigation on the MER1 landing vehicle, the mission objectives require that the airplane traverse a precise flight pattern over the objective terrain at relatively low altitudes for hundreds of kilometers, and is more akin to a velocity correlator application than a terminal fix problem. The results of the investigation indicate that a good knowledge of aircraft altitude is required in order to obtain the desired performance for velocity estimate accuracy. However, it was determined that the direction of the velocity vector can be obtained without a high accuracy height estimate. The characterization of the dependency of velocity estimate accuracy upon the variety of factors involved in the process is the primary focus of this report. This report describes the approach taken in this investigation to both define the architecture of the solution for minimal impact upon payload requirements, and the analysis of the potential gains to the overall navigation problem. Also described as part of the problem definition are the initially assumed contribution sources of visual measurement errors and some additional constraints which limit the choices of solutions.

Conference Committee Involvement (7)

Intelligent Robots and Computer Vision XXXII: Algorithms and Techniques

9 February 2015 | San Francisco, California, United States

Intelligent Robots and Computer Vision XXXI: Algorithms and Techniques

5 February 2014 | San Francisco, California, United States

Intelligent Robots and Computer Vision XXX: Algorithms and Techniques

4 February 2013 | Burlingame, California, United States

Intelligent Robots and Computer Vision XXIX: Algorithms and Techniques

23 January 2012 | Burlingame, California, United States

Intelligent Robots and Computer Vision XXVI: Algorithms and Techniques

19 January 2009 | San Jose, California, United States

Showing 5 of 7 Conference Committees

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