Speeding up the KLT Tracker for Real-time Image Georeferencing using GPS/INS Data

A real-time image georeferencing system requires all inputs to be determined in real-time. The intrinsic camera parameters can be identified in advance from a camera calibration process while other control information can be derived instantaneously from real-time GPS/INS data. The bottleneck process is tie point acquisition since manual operations will be definitely obstacles for real-time system while the existing extraction methods are not fast enough. In this paper, we present a fast-and-automated image matching technique based on the KLT tracker to obtain a set of tie-points in real-time. The proposed work accelerates the KLT tracker by supplying the initial guessed tie-points computed using the GPS/INS data. Originally, the KLT only works effectively when the displacement between tie-points is small. To drive an automated solution, this paper suggests an appropriate number of depth levels for multi-resolution tracking under large displacement using the knowledge of uncertainties the GPS/INS data measurements. The experimental results show that our suggested depth levels is promising and the proposed work can obtain tie-points faster than the ordinary KLT by 13% with no less accuracy. This promising result suggests that our proposed algorithm can be effectively integrated into the real-time image georeferencing for further developing a real-time surveillance application.