Monitoring and detecting weather conditions based on images acquired from image sensor aboard mobile platforms

摘要

A weather control station receives from a communication network data packets transmitted wirelessly to the network by a mobile platform separated from the control station. The data packets carry images captured by an image sensor aboard the mobile platform and show one or more weather conditions local to the mobile platform. The control station recovers the images from the data packets and processes the recovered images according to one or more weather condition detection algorithms to detect the one or more weather conditions, respectively. The weather station reports the one or more detected weather conditions.

主权项

1. A method of detecting weather conditions using images from a mobile platform, comprising:
at a control station: receiving from a communication network data packets transmitted wirelessly to the network by a mobile platform separated from the control station, the data packets carrying images captured by an image sensor aboard the mobile platform and that show one or more weather conditions local to the mobile platform; recovering the images from the data packets; processing the images according to one or more weather condition detection algorithms to detect the one or more weather conditions, respectively, including processing to detect whether rain is present by:
segmenting the images into foreground regions representative of rain and background regions;bandpass filtering the foreground regions spatially and temporally;detecting spatiotemporal intensity fluctuations in the bandpass filtered foreground regions that result from an optical disruption of background illumination by rain drops;determining a frequency and magnitude of the detected intensity fluctuations; andcorrelating the frequency and magnitude of the detected intensity fluctuations with an intensity of rain fall; and reporting the one or more detected weather conditions.