In-Orbit Tracking of Resident Space Objects: A Comparison of Monocular and Stereoscopic Vision

This paper develops new methods for vision-based satellite attitude control aimed at space-based optical tracking of resident space objects (RSOs). An Earth-orbiting chaser satellite equipped with either one or two body-fixed cameras can successfully track an RSO provided that the target is kept within the camera field of view. Because the cameras are body fixed, the attitude of the satellite needs to be controlled to maintain target lock. Novel vision-based control algorithms are developed to align the chaser camera's optical axis with the chaser-target line of sight. Two control architectures are presented for the cases of monocular and stereoscopic vision. In the case of the monocular architecture, relative chaser-target acceleration information is not available. Moreover, in both cases unknown perturbations can impair the tracking performance. To increase the tracking algorithm's robustness to these effects, a variable structure attitude control technique is employed. The stability of the developed control laws are substantiated based on Lyapunov's direct method and demonstrated using Monte Carlo simulations. The results clearly show that using stereoscopic vision yields faster target tracking, increased robustness to noise and field-of-view limits, and reduced fuel consumption compared with monocular vision-based attitude tracking.