Monocular-Based Pose Estimation of Non-Cooperative Space Targets Using EKF and EKPF

Abstract

Relative pose estimation based on vision is widely used in various space navigation tasks. Considering the relative pose estimation problem of a spacecraft autonomous approaching to an unknown and non-cooperative target, a method for monocular-based pose estimation of non-cooperative space targets using Extended Kalman filter (EKF) and Extended Kalman Particle Filter (EKPF) is proposed. Compared with the existing methods, the proposed method does not depend on the prior information such as the size and shape of the target, and only uses the coordinates of the feature points of the target image as the filter input to realize the fast and accurate estimation of all pose parameters. Simulation results verify the effectiveness and feasibility of the proposed method.