Design of lidar-based sensors and algorithms for determining the relative motion of an impaired spacecraft

Ronald C. Fenton; R. Rees Fullmer; Robert T. Pack

doi:10.1117/12.602753

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20 May 2005 Design of lidar-based sensors and algorithms for determining the relative motion of an impaired spacecraft

Ronald C. Fenton, R. Rees Fullmer, Robert T. Pack

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Proceedings Volume 5778, Sensors, and Command, Control, Communications, and Intelligence (C3I) Technologies for Homeland Security and Homeland Defense IV; (2005) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.602753
Event: Defense and Security, 2005, Orlando, Florida, United States

Abstract

In recent years, NASA's interest in autonomous rendezvous and docking operations with impaired or non-cooperative spacecraft has grown extensively. In order to maneuver and dock, a servicing spacecraft must be able to determine the relative 6 degree-of-freedom (6 DOF) motion between the vehicle and the target spacecraft. One method to determine the relative 6 DOF position and attitude is through lidar imaging. A flash lidar sensor system can capture close-proximity range images of the target spacecraft, producing 3-D point cloud data sets. These sequentially collected point-cloud data sets can be compared to a point cloud image of the target at a known location using a point correspondence-less variant of the Iterative Closest Points (ICP) algorithm to determine the relative 6 DOF displacements. Simulation experiments indicate that the MSE, angular error, mean, and standard deviations for position and orientation estimates did not vary as a function of position and attitude. Furthermore, the computational times required by this algorithm were comparable to previously reported variants of the point-to-point and point-to-plane based ICP variants.

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Ronald C. Fenton, R. Rees Fullmer, and Robert T. Pack "Design of lidar-based sensors and algorithms for determining the relative motion of an impaired spacecraft", Proc. SPIE 5778, Sensors, and Command, Control, Communications, and Intelligence (C3I) Technologies for Homeland Security and Homeland Defense IV, (20 May 2005); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.602753

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