Camera Geolocation Using Digital Elevation Models in Hilly Area

Abstract

The geolocation of skyline provides an important application in unmanned vehicles, unmanned aerial vehicles, and other fields. However, the existing methods are not effective in hilly areas. In this paper, we analyze the difficulties to locate in hilly areas and propose a new geolocation method. According to the vegetation in hilly area, two new skyline features, enhanced angle chain code and lapel point, are proposed. In order to deal with the skyline being close to the camera, we also propose a matching method which incorporates skyline distance heatmap and skyline pyramid. The experimental results show that the proposed method is highly effective in hilly area and has a robust performance against noise and rotation effects.