Non-Cooperative Spacecraft Pose Measurement with Binocular Camera and TOF Camera Collaboration

Abstract

Non-cooperative spacecraft pose acquisition is a challenge in on-orbit service (OOS), especially for targets with unknown structures. A method for the pose measurement of non-cooperative spacecrafts based on the collaboration of binocular and time-of-flight (TOF) cameras is proposed in this study. The joint calibration is carried out to obtain the transformation matrix from the left camera coordinate system to the TOF camera system. The initial pose acquisition is mainly divided into feature point association and relative motion estimation. The initial value and key point information generated in stereo vision are yielded to refine iterative closest point (ICP) frame-to-frame registration. The final pose of the non-cooperative spacecraft is determined through eliminating the cumulative error based on the keyframes in the point cloud process. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method is able to track the target spacecraft during aerospace missions, which may provide a certain reference value for navigation systems.

Keywords

• space traffic management
• binocular camera
• TOF camera
• joint calibration
• non-cooperative spacecraft
• pose estimation