Date of Award

3-2020

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science in Computer Science

Department

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

First Advisor

Scott L. Nykl, PhD

Abstract

The United States Air Force (USAF) executes five Core Missions, four of which depend on increased aircraft range. To better achieve global strike and reconnaissance, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) require aerial refueling for extended missions. However, current aerial refueling capabilities are limited to manned aircraft due to technical difficulties to refuel UAVs mid-flight. The latency between a UAV operator and the UAV is too large to adequately respond for such an operation. To overcome this limitation, the USAF wants to create a capability to guide the refueling boom into the refueling receptacle. This research explores the use of light detection and ranging (LiDAR) to create a relative pose estimation of the UAV and compares it to previous stereo vision results. Researchers at the Air Force Institute of Technology (AFIT) developed an algorithm to automate the refueling operation based on a stereo-vision system. While the system works, it requires a large amount of processing; it must detect an aircraft, compose an image between the two cameras' points of view, create a point cloud of the image, and run a point cloud alignment algorithm to match the point cloud to a reference model. These complex steps require a large amount of processing power and are subject to noise and processing artifacts.

AFIT Designator

AFIT-ENG-MS-20-M-013

DTIC Accession Number

AD1102918

Comments

SF298 appended to end of document.

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