Target pose estimation based on polarization imaging in low light and strong background noise

Pose information plays an important role in aviation, navigation, indoor robot positioning, and other fields. An increasing number of studies have shown that polarization is the key for some of the biometric navigation and vision applications in low light. In this paper, a method based on polarization imaging was proposed to understand the object pose under the environment of low light and strong background noise. Non-polarized light was converted to polarized light by setting the polarization film in front of an ordinary light source. A polarization camera was used to obtain the images of a polarized light source. Further, computer vision technology was used to identify the polarized light source and determine the pose of the light source relative to the camera. The results show that the polarization method proposed in this paper has better performance and robustness than light intensity. At a distance of 40 m, the pose error is 2.99%. This method uses polarization imaging to determine the pose of an object relative to the light source under the environment of low light and strong background noise. Thus, this study overcomes the problem that computer vision cannot estimate pose information of objects under low light environment. © 2021, Science Press. All right reserved.