Vision-based position and pose determination of non-cooperative target for on-orbit servicing

Abstract

For finding an effective measurement for space non-cooperative targets in close distance, a vision-based position and pose determination algorithm of non-cooperative target for on-orbit servicing is investigated. First, the satellite-rocket docking ring’s region is separated from the background environment by a selected grayscale thresholding method and the Canny operator algorithm is used to extract the edge of the satellite-rocket docking ring. Furthermore, the mathematical alignment of the image plane and binocular stereo matching are used to obtain the correspondence of 3D points. Finally, the model of 3D reconstruction is established to determine the relative position and pose of the satellite-rocket docking ring. The ground simulation test shows that our method can measure the relative position and pose of the satellite-rocket docking ring effectively. The precision of the relative position is 0.001 m and that of the relative attitude is 0.1 deg., which satisfies the requirements of the relative measurement for non-cooperative target in extra-close range.