DEVELOPMENT AND VALIDATION OF AN APPLICATION FOR PITCH DROP

Abstract

Of all the stages of the process of store separation, the flight test stage is the most expensive stage. Thus, the smaller the number of flights, the better. One step prior to in-flight tests is the pitch drop. In this stage, the use of a computer vision solution can assist engineers during the test to determine whether the test point was safe or not. When using cameras in any activity that requires accuracy in the results, it is necessary to perform the calibration of the optical system used in the tests. The IPEV has developed a solution that (1) the construction of a calibration field so that camera calibrations can be performed using a single frame; (2) a method for carrying out pitch drop test; (3) and an application that uses computational vision to process data from high-acquisition-rate cameras and generate the results in 6DoF. The development and validation of the solution are described in this work.