Experimental Evaluation of Pose Initialization Methods for Relative Navigation Between Non-Cooperative Satellites

TL;DR

This paper evaluates two monocular camera-based methods for estimating the relative pose between non-cooperative satellites, using a CubeSat mock-up and motion capture for performance assessment.

Contribution

It provides an experimental comparison of SVD and silhouette matching methods for satellite pose initialization without fiducial markers or prior range data.

Findings

Both methods successfully estimate relative pose in controlled tests.

Silhouette matching shows higher robustness to target orientation.

The methods achieve accurate initialization without prior range measurements.

Abstract

In this work, we have analyzed the problem of relative pose initialization between two satellites: a chaser and a non-cooperating target. The analysis has been targeted to two close-range methods based on a monocular camera system: the Sharma-Ventura-D'Amico (SVD) method and the silhouette matching method. Both methods are based on a priori knowledge of the target geometry, but neither fiducial markers nor a priori range measurements or state information are needed. The tests were carried out using a 2U CubeSat mock-up as target attached to a motorized rotary stage to simulate its relative motion with respect to the chaser camera. A motion capture system was used as a reference instrument that provides the fiducial relative motion between the two mock-ups and allows to evaluate the performances of the initialization algorithms analyzed.