Unified Attitude Determination Problem from Vector Observations and Hand-eye Measurements

TL;DR

This paper proposes a unified attitude determination method combining vector observations and hand-eye measurements, improving accuracy and robustness for spacecraft attitude estimation with closed-form solutions verified by NASA data.

Contribution

It introduces a novel unified approach that integrates vector observations with hand-eye measurements, providing closed-form solutions and uncertainty analysis for spacecraft attitude determination.

Findings

Enhanced attitude estimation accuracy and robustness.

Validated effectiveness with NASA spacecraft data.

Closed-form solutions with uncertainty quantification.

Abstract

The hand-eye measurements have recently been proven to be very efficient for spacecraft attitude determination relative to an ellipsoidal asteroid. However, recent method does not guarantee full attitude observability for all conditions. This paper refines this problem by taking the vector observations into account so that the accuracy and robustness of the spacecraft attitude estimation can be improved. The vector observations come from many sources including visual perspective geometry, optical navigation and point clouds that frequently occur in aerospace electronic systems. Completely closed-form solutions along with their uncertainty descriptions are presented for the proposed problem. Experiments using our simulated dataset and real-world spacecraft measurements from NASA dawn spacecraft verify the effectiveness and superiority of the derived solution.