A Panoramic Stereo Imaging System for Aircraft Guidance

This paper describes an imaging system for aircraft guidance that provides panoramic stereo vision to facilitate surveillance, obstacle detection and avoidance, terrain following and landing. The system uses a single video camera in conjunction with a set of specially shaped reflective surfaces to enable the detection of objects in the environment and estimation of their range through stereo. The advantage of this device over systems that use optic flow information for visual guidance is that it does not rely on the movement the aircraft. Therefore, it can be used even at low flight speeds or hover.