Optical flow based guidance system design for semi-strapdown image homing guided missiles

This paper focuses mainly on semi-strapdown image homing guided (SSIHG) system design based on optical flow for a six-degree-of-freedom (6-DOF) axial-symmetric skid-to-turn missile. Three optical flow algorithms suitable for large displacements are introduced and compared. The influence of different displacements on computational accuracy of the three algorithms is analyzed statistically. The total optical flow of the SSIHG missile is obtained using the Scale Invariant Feature Transform (SIFT) algorithm, which is the best among the three for large displacements. After removing the rotational optical flow caused by rotation of the gimbal and missile body from the total optical flow, the remaining translational optical flow is smoothed via Kalman filtering. The circular navigation guidance (CNG) law with impact angle constraint is then obtained utilizing the smoothed translational optical flow and position of the target image. Simulations are carried out under both disturbed and undisturbed conditions, and results indicate the proposed guidance strategy for SSIHG missiles can result in a precise target hit with a desired impact angle without the need for the time-to-go parameter.