Relative pose estimation for cylinder-shaped spacecrafts using single image

This paper describes a novel framework to determine the relative pose and range of a solid-of-revolution-shaped spacecraft from a single image without any artificial beacons. The translation and the symmetry axis of the spacecraft can be estimated from the imaged cross sections of the spacecraft body. Then the pose and range of the spacecraft are fully determined by means of the images of its solar panels and asymmetric feature. Our method has been validated by both synthetic and real images.

I. Introduction

Guidance, navigation, and control technologies for autonomous rendezvous and docking (RVD) demand accurate, real-time measurements and estimations of relative range and attitude [1]. With the development of computer science, numerous scholars have attached importance to location and attitude estimation based on computer vision techniques in many research fields [1]–[45]. By comparison with active sensors, vision-based measurements don't suffer from the shortcomings of expensiveness, large power consumption, and small work field [1]. The traditional vision-based methods for RVD are to determine the relative attitude and range by several luminous artificial beacons precisely installed on the target spacecraft [2]–[4]. Therefore such methods are easily influenced by the light condition because it is difficult for optical sensors to clearly capture the beacons in a bright condition.