Acquisition, Tracking, and Pointing

doi:10.1117/3.2553485.ch3

Book: Photonics Rules of Thumb, Third Edition

Author(s): John Lester Miller, Katie Schwertz, Edward J. Friedman, John N. Sanders-Reed, Brian K. McComas

Published: 2020

https://doi.org/10.1117/3.2553485.ch3

Author Affiliations +

Abstract

The fundamental purpose of an acquisition, tracking, and pointing (ATP) system is to keep a moving target in the FOV of a sensor, allowing the development of a time history of the object. As such, ATP is a system-level problem involving sensors, algorithms to detect targets, algorithms to assign multiple detections to multiple active target tracks (detect-totrack assignment), control loops to drive a pointing system (typically gimbals) to maintain the FOV centered on the target, and finally the gimbals themselves. Successful development of an ATP system requires expertise in optics, sensors, algorithms, real-time processing, control loops, and gimbal systems. Note that this is very different from an intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) system, which simply gathers imagery of an area with functions such as detection, recognition, and identification (DRI) performed at least quasi-independently (although rules for DRI are included in this chapter). While functions such as ISR or “scene understanding” can benefit from temporal data, they are not fundamentally time-based functions, whereas ATP at its core is a temporal process. While ATP usually involves a pointing system, a special case involves the use of a fixed line of sight (LOS) sensor collecting a video sequence. In this case, the target is detected and tracked as its image moves across the image (focal plane).