Navigation for Satellite Formation Flying

Abstract

This paper deals with the case of a target satellite in an unknown orientation and location with respect to the master satellite. Feature based monocular pose estimation vision system was presented. The results of analysis, implementation and testing of simulation intended for vision-based navigation applications such as rendezvous of satellites and formation flying are shown. The mobile robot was used as the platform for the vision system. Pose estimation algorithms were implemented in Matlab environment. It was obtained that the proposed method is robust on varying and low light conditions.

Keywords

• satellite
• vision navigation
• autonomous docking