DESIGN AND CONSTRUCTION OF LASER AND VIDEO TRACKING SYSTEM

Abstract

The system that has been designed and constructed combined of laser tracking system and video tracking system. The laser tracking system consists of laser source, optomechanical housing, electro-optic unit and interfacing unit. The laser beam was transmitted to a moving target and received by the optical receiver. The heart of the optical receiver is the quadratic detector, which is received the returned beam and converted to electrical signal and then to digital signal through an ADC and that shown as image of the target on the monitor. In video tracking the CCD camera has been used, and the moving target detected. The performance of the system is evaluated by conducting several tests on computer and camera generated scenes for different target and background conditions. The software used to determine the error function in the target position is a visual basic program. There are many advantages of this system: First, the system combined of laser tracking and video tracking; this gives cooperative performance with high efficiency. Second, the system used four ADC rather than one ADC with multiplexer so the system is fast. Third, The software program has the ability to process directly with the PC. RAM without returning to the drivers of the video card. This point is very important because the principle of the real time may be approached. Four, The calculation of the attenuation is analytical, rather than empirical in the other systems. Finally, the Cassegranian optomechanical housing has beenused in this system is better than Newtonian, Gregorian and Herschelian optomechanical housing.