A system for calibrating a camera for use aboard a fuel-supplying aircraft (“tanker”) for an automated air-to-air refueling (“A3R”) process in which the tanker offloads aviation fuel to a fuel-receiving aircraft (“receiver”) includes an electronic control unit having a processor and a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium on which is recorded instructions for calibrating the camera. Executing the instructions causes the processor to perform a corresponding method, i.e., to receive boom position data indicative a true position of the boom in free space, and real-time image data from the camera. The instructions also cause the processor to use the boom position data and a 3D model of the boom to project a digital representation of the boom into the image space. The processor then minimizes a difference between the projected and real images of the boom to thereby calibrate the camera.
Camera calibration optimization using image segmentation and boom resolvers for automated air-to-air refueling
2024-09-10
Patent
Electronic Resource
English
European Patent Office | 2024
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