Continue to Site

Welcome to our site!

Electro Tech is an online community (with over 170,000 members) who enjoy talking about and building electronic circuits, projects and gadgets. To participate you need to register. Registration is free. Click here to register now.

  • Welcome to our site! Electro Tech is an online community (with over 170,000 members) who enjoy talking about and building electronic circuits, projects and gadgets. To participate you need to register. Registration is free. Click here to register now.

DSP and image processing

Status
Not open for further replies.
Bweeeep! Bweeep! You better hide Phill, the FBI is coming for you! Slightly odd question to be asking, mainly because putting a guidance system on just about anything that flys is illegal in the US.
 
There are a lot of defense contractors here in Texas, and lots of gov't research grants for places developing military equipment. I wouldn't be surprised if the OP is in something like that. I used to work at a place here in Texas that did fuel cells for UAV's for the Air Force.

I have done digital image processing (upper division course in college getting my BSEE), is there a particular thing you need help with?
 
Last edited:
Bweeeep! Bweeep! You better hide Phill, the FBI is coming for you! Slightly odd question to be asking, mainly because putting a guidance system on just about anything that flys is illegal in the US.
Lol...

I didn't know that. Either way, I am just doing some research for a project, and as far as job ideas go. I am not nearly skilled enough to undertake an entire guidance design myself, just the DSP part.

speakerguy79 said:
There are a lot of defense contractors here in Texas, and lots of gov't research grants for places developing military equipment. I wouldn't be surprised if the OP is in something like that. I used to work at a place here in Texas that did fuel cells for UAV's for the Air Force.

I have done digital image processing (upper division course in college getting my BSEE), is there a particular thing you need help with?


Two things actually I was inquiring about:
1. What would some different DSP techniques used when scanning terrain, or buildings?
2. AS stated I am considering going into this field, the thing is the only company I know of is Raytheon, and from what I understand, they are hard to get hired on, and they do lay-offs to engineers quite a bit. My question was basically: what are soem companies that handle this kind of work, and if they are relativley good to work for, any other info, etc...?

Thanks guys for the help.

I will be completing my engineering degree roughly around December, and there are so many ideas, and things I have interest in, I am considering all of my options.
 
Last edited:
I worked for Martin Marietta, in Orlando, just out of school in 1970 on the Pershing II. This was before the microprocessor and digital techniques so what I remember probably won't help much. I can tell you that working for a job shop is a great way to get hired full time.
 
Didn't mean to be a nag Phil =) DSP image processing is way out of my league though, that stuff is like black magic to me, I can't even wrap my head around half that stuff.

I do know that as far as terrain mapping goes stereo cameras are better. I don't know what the military uses, but I imagine they use some sophisticated edge detection algorithms first and seeing as how you're moving compare current points with previous points trying to filter out all the noise.

For things like small robots laser scanners are pretty popular the camera only needs to be senative to a single color of light and with a known line path you can calculate the distance of the perceived beam.
 
1. What would some different DSP techniques used when scanning terrain, or buildings?
When I was in college I did a term project involving terrain classification using hyperspectral images and neural networks. It was for a neural networks class and didn't have anything to do with DSP. It was for determining changes in wetlands and marshes and surrounding areas based solely on aerial hyperspectral images so you could monitor environmental changes on a large scale from the air.

The basic tool you want to understand is going to be the DFT of an image. Go find a hacked copy of Matlab with the image processing library and play around with it.

Raytheon is the big one, but there are several other ones. Dallas has a lot of that stuff, but aside from Raytheon I don't know who all is up there. Boeing is one I think. I'd just go to every website for every name I could think of and see if they have Tx locations. Lots of stuff will turn up for Dallas and Houston.
 
Last edited:
Didn't mean to be a nag Phil =) DSP image processing is way out of my league though, that stuff is like black magic to me, I can't even wrap my head around half that stuff.

I do know that as far as terrain mapping goes stereo cameras are better. I don't know what the military uses, but I imagine they use some sophisticated edge detection algorithms first and seeing as how you're moving compare current points with previous points trying to filter out all the noise.

For things like small robots laser scanners are pretty popular the camera only needs to be senative to a single color of light and with a known line path you can calculate the distance of the perceived beam.


You were no nag, I understood you were just kidding.:) Thanks for the info Sceadwian.

Papabravo said:
I worked for Martin Marietta, in Orlando, just out of school in 1970 on the Pershing II. This was before the microprocessor and digital techniques so what I remember probably won't help much. I can tell you that working for a job shop is a great way to get hired full time.

Yes, I agree, this is a good way to get started sometimes. Thanks for the info.



Speakerguy said:
When I was in college I did a term project involving terrain classification using hyperspectral images and neural networks. It was for a neural networks class and didn't have anything to do with DSP. It was for determining changes in wetlands and marshes and surrounding areas based solely on aerial hyperspectral images so you could monitor environmental changes on a large scale from the air.

The basic tool you want to understand is going to be the DFT of an image. Go find a hacked copy of Matlab with the image processing library and play around with it.

Raytheon is the big one, but there are several other ones. Dallas has a lot of that stuff, but aside from Raytheon I don't know who all is up there. Boeing is one I think. I'd just go to every website for every name I could think of and see if they have Tx locations. Lots of stuff will turn up for Dallas and Houston.

Yes I am currently checking with Raytheon. I am interested in them, but have heard things about them laying off frequently, however, I don't know how true that is.

Lockeed Martin is also an interest as well.

DFT's Yep, after studying the extremely complicated equations and FFT's, maybe I can actually apply them to something cool after all. I am currently researching DFT implementation with TERCOM, which is actually kind of similar to what you described.

Thanks for the info.
 
Last edited:
Government contract companies like Raytheon are not the best places to work for. I worked for a few like Allied Bendix. The work hours are long, the pay is low, and they are contract based so many layoffs at the end of the contract. Many times the companies spend very little on equipment so very little to go around amongst the design group, so sharing and waiting are common. My experience may be isolated but I suspect not.
 
Government contract companies like Raytheon are not the best places to work for. I worked for a few like Allied Bendix. The work hours are long, the pay is low, and they are contract based so many layoffs at the end of the contract. Many times the companies spend very little on equipment so very little to go around amongst the design group, so sharing and waiting are common. My experience may be isolated but I suspect not.
Your experience is not dissimilar to working for a nimble startup that burns through the VC's cash in 22 months, or the large company that is too ossified to realize that its markets are shifting, moving, and changing. In the words of William Wallace's Irish friend from the movie Braveheart, "We're all fooked!":) Just got laid of last Thursday because the machine tool business is in the crapper and there "...are no new orders conin' in". So like all good contractors I need to find a new client while I concentrate on client #2.
 
Last edited:
I had originally lived in San Antonio and had a good friend who worked for Raytheon there. Some of the stuff he worked on was pretty neat but there were constant layoffs, eventually he did get the ax.

Southwest research is down there too, I had interviewed with them a couple of times but pay was REALLY low. They did all kinds of things from monkeys to ballistics tests.
 
solar tracking actuators two axis

New to this forum, can someone tell me how to chat with groups interested in two axis solar tracking ?
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Latest threads

New Articles From Microcontroller Tips

Back
Top