A Novel Stitching Method for Dust and Rock Analysis Based on Yutu Rover Panoramic Imagery

Abstract

The distributions of lunar dust and rock can reflect a large amount of physical and geological information, which has contributed to analyze the environment of the Moon. China's Yutu rover collected large numbers of high-definition images of the lunar surface. In order to obtain a wide field of view and study the lunar environment at close quarters, this article proposes a novel image stitching method named as-least-loss-as-possible wrap to provide a reasonable wider overview of the studying area based on the Yutu rover. In the proposed scheme, a double-feature matching approach is designed to solve the matching error which is generated by the specific environment of the lunar surface. From the stitched image, it can be found that the proposed method can achieve well stitched results for scientific studies, the distribution of the lunar dust on the rock's surface associates with the shadow (temperature), roughness, and height of the rock, and a special ribbon-type distribution of the lunar rocks is demonstrated clearly in a wide stitched image. This ribbon band is caused by the density inhomogeneity of impact target. And the distribution of lunar dust on the rock has the same pattern, even on the whole Moon.