Navigation for satellites

Abstract

Navigation is a main challenge for the operation of an autonomous satellite. This paper deals with the problem of pose estimation for real-time vision based navigation system. Presented method is able to estimate the target pose with high accuracy and does not require any landmark on the object. The results of numerical simulation were presented. The delays introduced by guidance system into the control system of an active satellite were tested. Experimental results showed that the proposed method of navigation introduced a small delay in the control system. Created system is also robust to occlusions and light variations in space. The approach will be further evaluated and tested in the continued work.