Title:  Stealth Navigation: Planning and Behaviors
Authors: Srinivas Ravela, Richard Weiss, Bruce Draper, Brian Pinette,
Allen Hanson and  Edward Riseman
Affiliation: Computer Vision Research Laboratory, Dept. of 
Computer Science, University of Massachusetts, Box 34610, Amherst, MA
0l003-4610
Abstract: Stealth navigation is a fundamental  capability for a 
scout vehicle to effectively perform reconnaissance missions. 
One component of stealth is the ability to plan paths that minimize
visibility  of the vehicle from target locations. This paper
demonstrates a stealth planning system using visibility analysis on
digital terrain elevation maps for path planning.   Goal locations 
can be user specified or  automatically constructed at the
visibility  boundary for RSTA operations. The second
component of our stealth navigation system is  the ability to
control a vehicle to minimize exposure during RSTA operations 
in the presence of sensor
measurement error, inaccurate terrain maps or a dynamic environment.
The notion of visual stealth behavior, i.e. visual servoing to acquire
and maintain a stealth position or trajectory  is introduced as a
mechanism for robust stealth navigation. Matching and tracking terrain
features in the image space are  identified as important pre-requisites for
visual stealth behaviors. A method is described   
to track  an important terrain feature in image-space namely, horizon curves. 

Keywords: tracking, visual servoing, 
path planning, harmonic potential
functions, visibility, stealth, model-based tracking