Automatic TMA solver (determining target course and position from bearings alone)

Using an external program to automate the process of Target Motion Analysis, which is to determine target parameters from passive sonar / bearings alone.

the rationale behind

This is a C++ program that I converted from my original open-sourced Dangerous Waters automatic TMA project.

The core technology behind it is to use computer vision to detect lines in an image and do automatic TMA directly on those lines, utilizing BFGS minimization algorithm on a set of equations. The program outputs target course and shows target position/trace directly on the image, but you'll need to calculate the speed yourself.

usage

This program can be used when you're in the process of plotting target ship's bearing on the map. Here's an example taken from another guide in this section. As our uboat is moving along, we take 4 bearings (as an example, but not limited to 4 bearings) of the target ship with the same time interval.

Yes, you're required to record bearing using the same time interval but does not need to be stationary when plotting bearings.


Now we want to figure out the target course and position using those 4 bearing lines alone.

instructions on using the program

Software Dependency (usually already installed if you play other games):
Visual C++ Redistributable for Visual Studio 2015 x86 and x64[www.microsoft.com]

1. Take a screenshot of in-game map and put the image in the same folder as the tool.

2. Run the tool and select/drag the console window to anywhere convenient to you. Caution: DO NOT click on the image window yet, which will cause the line detector to freeze and you'll not get an update on which line is detected.

3. Hand-label each detected line numerically, starting from 0. This represents time sequence of the bearing line.

3. If a line is falsely detected, type in a negative number, such as -1.

4. All TMA solutions will be displayed on the image in green.

There's a sample image in the folder for you to practise how to use the program.

Video of using the program:

after getting a satisfying solution

After you're satisfied with the solution provided by the program, plot the target course on the in-game map and then you can figure out the speed of the target.

download link

The link for this program on google drive: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1OaN4eprTQA_PVVykpIl9EnkoR3gSDssq