Influence of sensor motion on infrared target acquisition

The effect of linear image motion and high frequency vibrations on human target acquisition performance is considered. Two clutter metrics, one local and the other global, are combined to form a single signal-to-clutter ratio (SCR) metric. The SCR is used as a parameter in the model for actual target acquisition results. Two experiments involving human observers are considered: (1) A static experiment is performed with spatial filters whose frequency characteristics are those appropriate for the image degradation obtained from a moving sensor, and (2) a dynamic experiment is executed which imitates the operation of a scanning camera with a constant velocity as in airborne imagers. It was found in both experiments that image motion increases the detection time of a target by the observer. As the complexity of the original images increases, detection time was found to increase more rapidly as a function of blur radius in the first experiment and velocity in the second experiment. However, our blurred images in the first experiment, representative of the degradation expected from motion, actually enables more observers to eventually acquire the target despite the longer acquisition time.