High-Fidelity Verification and Validation of Spaceborne Vision-Based Navigation
Abstract
This proposal responds to the urgent need of the Department of Defense (DoD) to developnew spaceborne navigation algorithms and avionics for missions in space situational awareness(SSA), surveillance, and on-orbit servicing (OOS). Vision-based navigation technologies are wellsuitedto these applications because the required sensors have a high dynamic range and are small,inexpensive, and passive. However, conventional vision-based navigation algorithms used forterrestrial applications are unsuitable for space missions due to the limited computational resourcesof spacecraft and the harsh, rapidly-varying illumination conditions in space. To enable futuremissions to operate with increased autonomy in more challenging operational scenarios, newalgorithms must be developed that are tailored to the space environment. Before these algorithmscan be flown, they must be validated through hardware-in-the-loop simulations that replicate thegeometric and radiometric characteristics of the space illumination environment with greaterfidelity than can be achieved by current facilities. To meet this need, the requested equipment inthis proposal will augment the capabilities of two experimental testbeds at the Space RendezvousLaboratory for realistic stimulation of space-capable vision-based sensors (VBS) with sufficientfidelity to the space illumination environment to enable validation of new algorithms for anglesonlynavigation, pose estimation, and three-dimensional model recovery. These novel testbeds arethe optical stimulator (OS) [1] and the Testbed for Rendezvous and Optical Navigation (TRON)
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- Jul 24, 2019
- Source ID
- FA95501810492
Entities
People
- Simone D Amico
Organizations
- Air Force Office of Scientific Research
- Stanford University
- United States Air Force