Experimental Evaluation of Pose Initialization Methods for Relative Navigation Between Non-Cooperative Satellites
This work addresses the challenge of satellite relative navigation for space missions, but it is incremental as it focuses on experimental evaluation of existing methods.
The paper tackled the problem of relative pose initialization between non-cooperative satellites using monocular camera methods, specifically evaluating the SVD and silhouette matching methods, and found that both methods were tested with a CubeSat mock-up and motion capture system for performance assessment.
In this work, we have analyzed the problem of relative pose initialization between two satellites: a chaser and a non-cooperating target. The analysis has been targeted to two close-range methods based on a monocular camera system: the Sharma-Ventura-D'Amico (SVD) method and the silhouette matching method. Both methods are based on a priori knowledge of the target geometry, but neither fiducial markers nor a priori range measurements or state information are needed. The tests were carried out using a 2U CubeSat mock-up as target attached to a motorized rotary stage to simulate its relative motion with respect to the chaser camera. A motion capture system was used as a reference instrument that provides the fiducial relative motion between the two mock-ups and allows to evaluate the performances of the initialization algorithms analyzed.