Recognition of Aircraft Activities at Airports on Video Micro-Satellites: Methodology and Experimental Validation

Abstract

The remote sensing satellite constellation based on micro-satellites is an important means to construct a global and all-sky earth observation system in the future. Therefore, realizing the recognition of aircraft activities on video micro-satellites is a key technology that needs to be solved urgently. In this paper, an efficient algorithm for aircraft activity recognition that can be deployed on video micro-satellites was proposed. First, aircraft detection was performed on the first incoming remote sensing image using a robust DCNN-based object detection model. Then, a multi-target tracking model incorporating geospatial information was built for aircraft tracking and activity recognition. The algorithm was deployed on an embedded AI computer which was a COTS component. The algorithm was verified using remote sensing videos from commercial micro-satellites. Experimental results show that the algorithm can process aircraft targets of different sizes, and is equally effective even with complex environmental backgrounds, lighting conditions, and various movements of the aircraft, such as turning, entering, and exiting. Based on aircraft tracking results and geospatial information, the motion speed of each aircraft can be obtained, and its activity can be divided into parking, taxiing, or flying. The scheme proposed in this paper has good application prospects in the realization of on-orbit event recognition in micro-satellites with limited computing and memory resources.

Keywords

• micro-satellite
• staring-imaging
• aircraft tracking
• DCNN
• embedded AI processor