A Novel Approach To Aircraft Silhouette Recognition Using Genetic Algorithms

An approach to aircraft silhouette recognition using a genetic algorithm for pattern analysis and search tasks and a bimorph shape classifier is presented. The bimorph classifier produces an assortment of shapes derived from a medial axis transform language (MAT) by establishing a set of genes, a chromosome, that portrays the genetic makeup of each shape produced. Each gene represents a unique shape feature for that object and each chromosome a unique object. The chromosomes are used to generate the shapes embodying the classification space. The genetic algorithm then performs a search on the space until the exemplar shape is found that matches an unknown aircraft. The outcome of the search is a chromosome that consitutes the aircraft shape characteristics. The chromosome may then be compared to that of known aircraft to determine the type of aircraft in question. The procedures and results of utilizing this classification system on various aircraft silhouettes are presented