Related papers: Design of a Visual Pose Estimation Algorithm for M…
Because of the communication delay between earth and moon, the GNC technology of lunar probe is becoming more important than ever. Current navigation technology is not able to provide precise motion estimation for probe landing control…
It is often necessary to identify a pattern of observed craters in a single image of the lunar surface and without any prior knowledge of the camera's location. This so-called "lost-in-space" crater identification problem is common in both…
Terrain relative navigation can improve the precision of a spacecraft's position estimate by detecting global features that act as supplementary measurements to correct for drift in the inertial navigation system. This paper presents a…
The Artemis program requires robotic and crewed lunar rovers for resource prospecting and exploitation, construction and maintenance of facilities, and human exploration. These rovers must support navigation for 10s of kilometers (km) from…
Onboard localization capabilities for planetary rovers to date have used relative navigation, by integrating combinations of wheel odometry, visual odometry, and inertial measurements during each drive to track position relative to the…
Air-bearing platforms for simulating the rotational dynamics of satellites require highly precise ground truth systems. Unfortunately, commercial motion capture systems used for this scope are complex and expensive. This paper shows a novel…
The ability to determine the pose of a rover in an inertial frame autonomously is a crucial capability necessary for the next generation of surface rover missions on other planetary bodies. Currently, most on-going rover missions utilize…
In this work, we propose a new learning approach for autonomous navigation and landing of an Unmanned-Aerial-Vehicle (UAV). We develop a multimodal fusion of deep neural architectures for visual-inertial odometry. We train the model in an…
A key requirement for autonomous on-orbit proximity operations is the estimation of a target spacecraft's relative pose (position and orientation). It is desirable to employ monocular cameras for this problem due to their low cost, weight,…
Accurate real-time pose estimation of spacecraft or object in space is a key capability necessary for on-orbit spacecraft servicing and assembly tasks. Pose estimation of objects in space is more challenging than for objects on Earth due to…
On-board estimation of the pose of an uncooperative target spacecraft is an essential task for future on-orbit servicing and close-proximity formation flying missions. However, two issues hinder reliable on-board monocular vision based pose…
Reliable spatial information can be difficult to obtain in planetary remote sensing applications because of errors present in the metadata of images taken with space probes. We have designed a pipeline to address this problem on…
Robotic and human lunar landings are a focus of future NASA missions. Precision landing capabilities are vital to guarantee the success of the mission, and the safety of the lander and crew. During the approach to the surface there are…
Optical navigation is a critical component for lunar orbiter and lander missions. Image-based crater identification has emerged as a promising technology for optical navigation due to the abundance of craters on the lunar surface and the…
Highly accurate real-time localization is of fundamental importance for the safety and efficiency of planetary rovers exploring the surface of Mars. Mars rover operations rely on vision-based systems to avoid hazards as well as plan safe…
We address the problem of estimating the relative 6D pose, i.e., position and orientation, of a target spacecraft, from a monocular image, a key capability for future autonomous Rendezvous and Proximity Operations. Due to the difficulty of…
The Lunar landing has drawn great interest in lunar exploration in recent years, and autonomous lunar landing navigation is fundamental to this task. AI is expected to play a critical role in autonomous and intelligent space missions, yet…
There has been an increase in interest in missions that drive significantly longer distances per day than what has currently been performed. Further, some of these proposed missions require autonomous driving and absolute localization in…
Optical cameras are gaining popularity as the suitable sensor for relative navigation in space due to their attractive sizing, power and cost properties when compared to conventional flight hardware or costly laser-based systems. However, a…
This work introduces the Spacecraft Pose Network (SPN) for on-board estimation of the pose, i.e., the relative position and attitude, of a known non-cooperative spacecraft using monocular vision. In contrast to other state-of-the-art pose…