Matching aerial images to 3-D terrain maps

A terrain-matching algorithm is presented for use in a passive aircraft navigation system. A sequence of aerial images is matched to a reference digital map of the 3-D terrain. Stereo analysis of successive images results in a recovered elevation map. A cliff map is then used as a novel compact representation of the 3-D surfaces. The position and heading of the aircraft are determined with a terrain-matching algorithm that locates the unknown cliff map within the reference cliff map. The robustness of the matching algorithm is demonstrated by experimental results using real terrain data.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">></ETX>