Rectangular Natural Feature Recognition and Pose Measurement Method for Non-Cooperative Spacecraft

• DOI: 10.20944/preprints202401.0029.v1
• Publication Date: 2024-01-04T01:16:38Z
• Authors: Fengxu Wang; Wenfu Xu; Lei Yan; Chengqing Xie; Weihua Pu
• Keywords: pose measurement; 0203 mechanical engineering; non-cooperative targets; TL1-4050; 02 engineering and technology; parallelogram fitting; stereovision; rectangle; Motor vehicles. Aeronautics. Astronautics

Accurately estimating the pose of spacecraft is indispensable for space applications. However, such targets are generally non-cooperative, i.e., no markers are mounted on it and no parts for operation. Therefore, the detection and measurement of a non-cooperative target is very challenging. Stereovision sensors are important solutions in the near field. In this paper, a rectangular natural feature recognition and pose measurement method for non-cooperative spacecraft is proposed. Solar panels or the bodies of spacecraft are selected as detection objects and their image features are captured by stereo vision. These rectangle features are then reconstructed in 3D Cartesian space through parallelogram fitting on the image planes of two cameras. The vertexes are used to calculate the center position of the rectangle and the direction of the fixed coordinate system to solve the pose and attitude of the non-cooperative target. An experimental system is built to validate the effectiveness of the algorithm. The experimental results show that the average position measurement error of the algorithm is about 10mm and the average attitude measurement error is less than 1°. The results show that the proposed method has high accuracy and efficiency.