Temporally consistent position estimation refinement for aerial refueling

• Main Authors: KHOSLA, Deepak, SMITH, Haden Harrison, HUNG, Fan Hin, NGUYEN, Leon Nhat
• Format: Patent
• Language: English
• Published: 20.07.2023
• Subjects: AIRCRAFT; ARRANGEMENTS OR MOUNTING OF POWER PLANTS OR PROPULSIONTRANSMISSIONS IN AIRCRAFT; AVIATION; CALCULATING; COMPUTER SYSTEMS BASED ON SPECIFIC COMPUTATIONAL MODELS; COMPUTING; CONTROLLING; COSMONAUTICS; COUNTING; ELECTRIC COMMUNICATION TECHNIQUE; ELECTRICITY; EQUIPMENT FOR FITTING IN OR TO AIRCRAFT; FLYING SUITS; GYROSCOPIC INSTRUMENTS; IMAGE DATA PROCESSING OR GENERATION, IN GENERAL; MEASURING; MEASURING DISTANCES, LEVELS OR BEARINGS; NAVIGATION; PARACHUTES; PERFORMING OPERATIONS; PHOTOGRAMMETRY OR VIDEOGRAMMETRY; PHYSICS; PICTORIAL COMMUNICATION, e.g. TELEVISION; REGULATING; SURVEYING; SYSTEMS FOR CONTROLLING OR REGULATING NON-ELECTRIC VARIABLES; TESTING; TRANSPORTING

Aspects of the disclosure provide fuel receptacle position estimation for aerial refueling (derived from aircraft position estimation). A video stream (200) comprising a plurality of video frames (200a-200d) each showing an aircraft (110) to be refueled, is received from a single camera (108). An initial position estimate (502) is determined for the aircraft (110) for the plurality of video frames (200a-200d), generating an estimated flight history (418) for the aircraft (110). The estimated flight history (418) for the aircraft (110) is used to determine a temporally consistent refined position estimate (504), based on known aircraft flight path trajectories in an aerial refueling setting. The position of a fuel receptacle (116) on the aircraft (110) is determined, based on the refined position estimate (504) for the aircraft (110), and an aerial refueling boom (104) may be controlled to engage the fuel receptacle (116). Examples may use a deep learning neural network (NN) or optimization (e.g., bundle adjustment) to determine the refined position estimate (504) from the estimated flight history (418).