Pose measurement of large non-cooperative satellite based on collaborative cameras

Abstract In recent years some communications satellites lost their ability due to the failure of mechanisms to deploy, which resulted in large cost. A space robotic system is expected to perform the on-orbit repairing mission. This is a tremendous challenge since the targets are generally non-cooperative, i.e. no facilities used for relative state measurement are mounted on the targets. Moreover these targets are very large. Limited by the FOV (field of view), a monocular camera cannot supply enough information of the targets in close range. In this paper, a method based on two collaborative cameras is proposed to determine the pose (position and orientation) of a large non-cooperative target. Firstly, we designed a sensing system used for the non-cooperative measurement, according to the investigation of the characteristics of communications satellites. A rectangular feature, which is common in the configuration of a satellite, is chosen as the recognized object. Secondly, we proposed that two cameras share the recognition task in a collaborative behavior, i.e. each provides partial image of the rectangle, and the full feature is then obtained by fusing their information. Lastly, the corresponding algorithm of image processing and pose measurement is addressed. Simulation results of typical cases verify the proposed approach.