Automatic target recognition apparatus and process

Claim 1

Apparatus for automatic recognition of a target object from a multimetric wave infrared or visible light image, including an image producing device; a primary separator for subjecting the image to primary segmentation in which the image is divided up into one or more primary homogeneous regions each approximating to an object of interest and data is extracted from the image about these primary regions, a first feature extraction device for receiving the extracted primary region data from the primary separator and recognising and extracting features from the extracted primary region data, which features have been predetermined to separate objects in the primary regions into different classes, a first classifying means for receiving the extracted features and classifying them thereby to recognise each object in the primary regions or to indicate that one or more of the objects is unclassified and therefore unrecognised, a secondary segmentation unit for receiving from the primary separator data about the original segmented image primary region containing an unrecognised object and for submitting this data to secondary segmentation to provide sub regions of greater homogeneity, and for extracting data from the primary region about the sub regions, a third feature extraction device for recognising and extracting classifying features from the extracted sub region data and, a second classifying means for receiving the extracted sub-region classifying features and utilising them to classify and thereby recognise each object in the sub regions or to recognise that each object in the sub regions is not a target object.