JPH0113040B2 - - Google Patents

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION The present invention relates to a gun control device that automatically controls a short-range gun primarily mounted on a vehicle by combining techniques in the fields of optics and electronics.

Conventional devices of this type use distance information obtained from the time required for a short pulsed laser beam to travel the distance between the gun and the target and the direction of the target as seen from the gun using a coordinate system fixed to the earth. The first bullet is fired by inputting the angle information expressed as a line of sight into a trajectory calculator, and at the same time when the first bullet reaches a plane perpendicular to the line of sight that includes the shooting target, a TV, infrared imaging device, etc. The angle difference between the shooting target and the shell was read from the image taken by the gun and used as a correction amount for the anticipation angle when firing the second bullet.

However, in order to obtain the image necessary to measure the angular difference between the firing target and the shell, conventional devices require the addition of a tracer tube that emits high-intensity light to the tail of the shell. Against this, it was not possible to improve the accuracy of the second and subsequent shells. In addition, in the case of a long-range target with a large launch angle, the angular velocity perpendicular to the line of sight at the time of impact will be large, so in order to detect impact errors with high accuracy, the imaging device must capture one screen. The disadvantage was that the time required for the process had to be shortened.

In order to eliminate the drawbacks of the conventional control device described above, this invention irradiates pulsed light at the time when the shell reaches a plane perpendicular to the line of sight that includes the target, visualizes the scene including the shell, and controls the towing tube. This is an attempt to control with high precision even the shells that do not have a gun, and will be explained in detail below using the drawings.

FIG. 1 shows an embodiment of the invention. In the figure, 1 is a distance measurement command circuit for generating a command signal for driving a distance measurement unit composed of elements 3 to 8 by the operator's push button operation, and 2 is a distance measurement command circuit. A central control circuit that transmits the command signal of circuit 1 to the distance measuring section and also gives a signal to put other circuits in the expected state, and 3 is a signal for oscillating the laser oscillator constituting the distance measuring section. 4 is a laser oscillator that generates pulsed light; 5 is a transmission optical system for projecting the pulsed laser light onto a target with good directionality; 6
is a receiving optical system for receiving the laser beam reflected from the target object, 7 is a receiver, 8 is a counter circuit for digitally measuring the interval between the laser beam transmission time and the reflected light reception time, A distance measuring section is configured by elements 3 to 8. 9 calculates the angle between the line of sight of the sighting optical system and the gun, based on the distance information to the target measured by the distance measurement unit and the angle information about the direction and altitude of the target measured by the sighting optical system. A trajectory calculator that calculates the look-ahead angle and calculates the time it takes for the shell to reach a plane (target plane) that includes the target and is perpendicular to the line of sight after firing the shell; 10 calculates the scene in the direction of the target; An imaging optical system for capturing an image, 11 is an imaging optical system 1
An imaging device 12 is composed of a light receiving element installed near the connection position of 0 and a circuit for generating a video signal from the electric signal. The first frame memories 1 and 13 that store the video signal of the imaging device 11 for one screen are the storage of the frame memory 1,
FM control circuits 1 and 14 for instructing functions such as erasure and transfer, and second frame memories 2 and 15 that store one screen worth of video signals from the imaging device 11 at the time when the shell reached the target surface. The FM control circuits 2 and 16 that give instructions to the optical system control circuits 2 and 16 are optical system control circuits for opening and closing the aperture of the imaging optical system 10 to control the amplitude to an appropriate level based on the video signal from the imaging device 11.
7 is a firing command circuit that gives a command to fire a shell, 18
19 is a firing detector that detects the firing of a shell; 19 is a gun pointing device that sets the direction of the gun using the expected angle calculated by the trajectory calculator 9; 20 is a gun to be controlled;
21 is a video monitor that displays the image obtained by the imaging device 11; 22 is a video monitor that processes the video signals of the two frame memories 12 and 14 to measure the landing error angle and determines whether the measured error angle is significant; This is a signal processing circuit that determines whether or not the target is hit, and among the above-mentioned elements 1 to 22, elements 3 to 8 forming the distance measurement unit and the remaining portion except for the gun 20 constitute the impact error angle measurement unit. .

Since the device is configured in this way, the operator can capture the target object using sighting glasses or the video monitor 21 screen, activate the ranging command circuit 1, and send the laser firing command signal via the central control circuit 2. The pulsed light from the laser oscillator 4 can be applied to the oscillation control circuit 3 and by the action of the circuit can be projected onto the target via the transmitting optical system 5.The reflected light from the target is transmitted via the receiving optical system 6 to the receiver 7. The laser light is input to the counter circuit 8, converted into an electrical signal, and input to the counter circuit 8, and the counter circuit 8, which has started counting, is stopped by the laser beam emission signal from the laser oscillator 4. Since the count value of the counter circuit 8 is proportional to the distance from the gun to the target object, by inputting this value to the trajectory calculator 9, the anticipation angle is determined and input to the gun pointing device 19. gun pointing device 1
At step 9, the gun 20 is set at a specified angle and preparation for firing is completed. At this stage, the operator fires the gun 20 by activating the firing command circuit 17 using a switch attached to the circuit. The firing detector 18 provides a firing signal to the central control circuit 2 at the time when the shell is fired. In the central control circuit 2, at the time when this firing signal is received plus the flight time already obtained from the trajectory calculator 9, a laser beam is irradiated in a direction centered on the target object, and the reflected image of the cannonball is targeted. A starting signal is given to an oscillation control circuit 3 for driving a laser oscillator 4 to obtain images superimposed on images of objects and backgrounds. The oscillation form of the laser oscillator 4 at this time is not intended to measure distance, so it is called
It does not need to be a switch operation; it may be a long pulse operation. At the same time, the central control circuit 2 provides an activation signal to the FM control circuit 215 in order to store in the frame memory 214 an image in the direction of the target including a reflected image of the cannonball irradiated with the laser beam. In the FM control circuit 215, the imaging device 11
It is determined at what time the video signal should be stored in the frame memory 214 according to the video signal sending format, and a catch signal is given to the frame memory 214.
For example, an imaging device using a videocon or CID type solid-state image sensor, or a scan-type infrared imaging device, regardless of whether it is a serial type or a parallel type,
While it is sufficient to use the first vertical synchronization signal in the composite video signal of the imaging device 11 as the catch signal, counting from the activation signal received by the FM activation circuit 215, it is sufficient to use the first vertical synchronization signal in the composite video signal of the imaging device 11 as the catch signal. In the imaging device 11, it is necessary to use the second vertical synchronization signal counted from the activation signal as a catch signal. Second
The figure is a time chart showing the time course of the operations of the elements of each section mentioned above. Inside the device, there are some parts where the signals must be negative due to the connection circuit, but for the sake of simplicity, all signals are shown as positive signals. Although not mentioned in the previous explanation, the output of the distance measurement command circuit 1 is also given to the FM control circuit 113 in addition to the laser oscillator 4, and
Please note that the memory contents of 12 are updated. The dotted line between the memory signal of the frame memory 112 and the output of the firing command circuit 17 indicates that the distance to the target is determined by the operator during this period as to whether or not it is valid for shooting. This is because. Furthermore, the fact that there are two types of storage signals in the frame memory 214 indicates that the difference depends on whether or not the image sensor used in the image pickup device 11 has a data storage function for one frame. This is the actually stored video signal. Furthermore, although the output waveform of the laser oscillator 4 during target irradiation is depicted as a random pulse, its time width is exaggerated. Actually, the laser oscillator 4
When using Nd:YAG laser as
It is 100μsec to 100μs. Note that the advantage of using a long pulse as the oscillation form is that the beam pattern varies for each pulse constituting the long pulse, and no spatial bias occurs when the long pulse is viewed as a whole.

Now, in this way, the two frame memories 1
The two images stored in 2 and 14 are as shown in FIGS. 3 and 4, one is a view in the direction of the target with the target in the center of the screen,
On the other hand, the target object is almost in the center, but it is shifted somewhat, and the reflected light of the laser beam from the cannonball is not so far shifted from the center of the screen, but it is superimposed. The signal processing circuit 22 automatically determines the amount of correction necessary for firing the next bullet from these two images, and the content of the signal processing is based on the fluctuation of the optical axis of the imaging device 11 due to the impact when firing the bullet. two-dimensional correlation processing to measure the brightness of the shell, brightest point detection processing to measure the direction of the shell that appears to shine brightly due to the irradiated laser light, and consideration of whether the detected brightest point is due to the shell. This is a judgment process. FIG. 5 is a diagram in which FIG. 2 and FIG. 3 are superimposed with reference to the frame of the screen for explaining the angle detected by the signal processing circuit 22.
The azimuths θ ₂ and _{φ 2} of the cannonball are determined by _the brightest point detection process. In addition, the content of the judgment process is to determine whether the barycentric coordinates of images binarized at different brightness levels are different in terms of the binarized brightness levels, or to determine whether the angle calculated by the following formula is the normal operation of the device. The purpose is to determine whether the expected range θ _L is exceeded under the circumstances.

θ _E = ((θ ₁ − θ ₂ ) ² + (φ ₁ − φ ₂ ) ² ) 1/2<θ _L
...(1) Now, when the error angle of the cannonball on the target surface is measured by the above operation, the value is sent to the central control circuit 2, where it is used as a correction amount from the expected angle calculated by the trajectory calculator 9. The subtracted value is sent to the gun pointing device 19. By the way, the above error angle should be corrected if the systematic error factors change due to the distance to the target, the distribution of wind speed in the space to the target, and even the temperature difference of the gun at the time of firing the first bullet. The quantity itself must be corrected. Therefore,
In the artillery control system, it is important to know how to update the amount of correction from the signal processing circuit 22, and the central control circuit 2 determines how many minutes ago the amount of correction obtained by firing the front bullet was updated. Is it measured?
Also, it compares the direction in which the measurement was taken, the distance it was, and the type of shell with the maximum permissible variation range prepared in advance to determine whether or not to update it. There is.

As described above, since the gun control device according to the present invention irradiates the laser beam at the time when the shell reaches the target surface, it is possible to visualize both the target and the shell without adding a tracer tube to the shell. Therefore, it has the advantage of being able to measure the true impact error after subtracting the movement of the collimation line.

Note that since this invention relates to a control device for a cannon, although not mentioned, the tail of the cannonball is made to have a high reflectance to the irradiated laser beam, so that even if the intensity of the irradiated laser beam is kept low, it is stored in the frame memory 214. It goes without saying that it is necessary to make the cannonball portion of the video signal have high brightness.

[Brief explanation of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a configuration diagram of a gun control device according to the present invention;
Figure 2 is a time chart showing the operation of the components;
FIG. 3 is a diagram showing an image input from the imaging device to the frame memory 1 before a shell is fired, and FIG. 4 is a diagram showing an image input from the imaging device to the frame memory 2 at the time when the shell reaches the target surface. , Figure 5 is the third
FIG. 4 is an explanatory diagram in which FIG. 4 and FIG. 4 are superimposed. In the figure, 1 is a ranging command circuit, 2 is a central control circuit, 3 is a firing control circuit, 4 is a laser oscillator, and 5
is a transmitting optical system, 6 is a receiving optical system, 7 is a receiver, 8
1 is a counter circuit, 9 is a trajectory calculator, 10 is an imaging optical system, 11 is an imaging device, 12 is a frame memory 1, 13 is an FM control circuit 1, 14 is a frame memory 2, 15 is an FM control circuit 2, and 16 is an optical system. a control circuit, 17 a firing command circuit, 18 a firing detector,
19 is a gun pointing device, 20 is a gun, 21 is a monitor, 2
2 is a signal processing circuit.

Claims (1)

[Claims] 1. A device is configured by a distance measuring section and a landing error angle measuring section, and the target object and the shell as seen from the gun at the time when the shell reaches the plane containing the target perpendicular to the line of sight connecting the gun and the target. In a gun control device that measures the angle of A laser oscillator that sometimes emits laser light,
an imaging device that receives reflected light from a cannonball irradiated by the output light of the laser oscillator and images the background; and a signal processing circuit that calculates an angle correction amount with respect to the firing direction of the cannonball from the output of the imaging device. A gun control device characterized by being equipped with.