Reuben Settergren will visit the U of A campus on Thursday, March 13, to meet with research faculty and staff at the Center for Advanced Spatial Technologies and to present a one-hour lecture on "Tracking Airborne Objects From Airborne Platforms With Line-of-Sight (LOS) Ribbons."

When a video sensor on an airborne platform observes another airborne object, it can be challenging to determine the observed flight path, due to the unknown range to the target. In a new analytic methodology, lines of sight from the sensor, through/beyond the target, are assembled into a "LOS Ribbon." Geometric analysis of the LOS Ribbon can in some circumstances reveal the likely flight path — and in other circumstances, it can't. This lecture will investigate collection geometries where the target flight path can be determined vs. when it is ambiguous and also consider sensitivity analysis of how perturbations in sensor position/orientation impact the accuracy of the solution.

Presentation details:

• Date: Thursday, March 13
• Location: J.B. Hunt Center, room 535 (fifth-floor boardroom)
• Time: 2-3 p.m.

Presenter bio: Reuben Settergren studied math/engineering at Johns Hopkins (B.S./M.S.E.'92) and operations research at Rutgers (Ph.D.'97); interned at the Space Telescope Science Institute; taught CS/math at the College of Wooster, Ohio; and did a postdoc at Imperial College, London. Projects during those academic years involved topics as varied as astronomy, genomics and finance. In 2001, he returned to his hometown of San Diego, California, where he has worked at BAE Systems for the past 24-plus years. At BAE Systems, Settergren has been involved with writing production software, research and development activities, and analytical projects in the field of photogrammetry. Settergren has been on the core photogrammetry team that developed and maintains the SOCET GXP software (a BAE Systems geospatial intelligence software product). Settergren has worked on maintaining and enhancing the SOCET GXP code as it relates to sensor models, coordinate systems, image matching, bundle adjustment, mensuration, error propagation, etc. Settergren has a pending patent for a recent project to create usable sensor models for images of orbiting satellites/debris ("Non Earth Registration"). The subject of this week's lecture also touches on another capability recently added to SOCET GXP, "Elevated Track Analysis."

About CAST: CAST acquires, aggregates, analyzes and applies geospatial data. Whether reconstructing past and present environments or reconciling virtual and physical worlds, CAST approaches spatial data problems in a project-based, applications-oriented, collaborative manner. CAST has resided in the Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences since its founding in 1991 and is actively involved in extensive research efforts. CAST is principally supported by competitive grants from federal and state agencies that are often developed in collaboration with industry and academic partners. CAST offers students, faculty, and the public opportunities to learn about and use a wide array of geospatial technologies including sUAS airframes and sensor platforms, terrestrial and airborne LiDAR, GNSS, photogrammetry, and advanced processing software.