Ground target recognition using rectangle estimation

We propose a ground target recognition method based on 3-D laser radar data. The method handles general 3-D scattered data. It is based on the fact that man-made objects of complex shape can be decomposed to a set of rectangles. The ground target recognition method consists of four steps; 3-D size and orientation estimation, target segmentation into parts of approximately rectangular shape, identification of segments that represent the target's functional/main parts, and target matching with CAD models. The core in this approach is rectangle estimation. The performance of the rectangle estimation method is evaluated statistically using Monte Carlo simulations. A case study on tank recognition is shown, where 3-D data from four fundamentally different types of laser radar systems are used. Although the approach is tested on rather few examples, we believe that the approach is promising.