N-ocular satellite relative state estimation

Estimating the pose, motion and structure of non-cooperative dynamic targets using on board sensors is a challenging problem. This work suggests using multiple-baseline stereovision for non-cooperative dynamic target relative pose, motion and structure estimation, with a particular emphasis on space applications. A computer-vision feature-matching algorithm is designed, which produces input data for a recursive filtering algorithm. A newly-developed initialization scheme is proposed, which decreases the ambiguity in the target center of mass location. The effect of varying the number of cameras is investigated. The proposed vision-based relative motion estimation method was validated at the Technion's Distributed Space Systems Laboratory. A scalability analysis indicates that the proposed method may be potentially useful for space applications.