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On-Orbit Inspection of an Unknown, Tumbling Target Using NASA's Astrobee Robotic Free-Flyers

Charles E. Oestreich, Antonio Terán Espinoza, Jessica Todd, Keenan Albee, Richard Linares
CVPRW 2021 pp. 2039-2047
doi:10.1109/CVPRW53098.2021.00232 /cvprw/2021/oestreich2021cvprw-onorbit/

Abstract

Autonomous spacecraft critically depend on on-orbit inspection (i.e., relative navigation and inertial properties estimation) to intercept tumbling debris objects or defunct satellites. This work presents a practical method for on-orbit inspection and demonstrates its performance in simulation using NASA’s Astrobee robotic free-flyers. The problem is formulated as a simultaneous localization and mapping task, utilizing IMU data from an observing "chaser" spacecraft and point clouds of the observed "target" spacecraft obtained via a 3D time-of-flight camera. The relative navigation between the chaser and target is solved via a factor graph-based approach. The target’s principal axes of inertia are then estimated via a conic fit optimization procedure using a polhode analysis. Simulation results indicate the accuracy of the proposed method in preparation for hardware experiments on the International Space Station.

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Cite

Text

Oestreich et al. "On-Orbit Inspection of an Unknown, Tumbling Target Using NASA's Astrobee Robotic Free-Flyers." IEEE/CVF Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Workshops, 2021. doi:10.1109/CVPRW53098.2021.00232

Markdown

[Oestreich et al. "On-Orbit Inspection of an Unknown, Tumbling Target Using NASA's Astrobee Robotic Free-Flyers." IEEE/CVF Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Workshops, 2021.](https://mlanthology.org/cvprw/2021/oestreich2021cvprw-onorbit/) doi:10.1109/CVPRW53098.2021.00232

BibTeX

@inproceedings{oestreich2021cvprw-onorbit,
  title     = {{On-Orbit Inspection of an Unknown, Tumbling Target Using NASA's Astrobee Robotic Free-Flyers}},
  author    = {Oestreich, Charles E. and Espinoza, Antonio Terán and Todd, Jessica and Albee, Keenan and Linares, Richard},
  booktitle = {IEEE/CVF Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Workshops},
  year      = {2021},
  pages     = {2039-2047},
  doi       = {10.1109/CVPRW53098.2021.00232},
  url       = {https://mlanthology.org/cvprw/2021/oestreich2021cvprw-onorbit/}
}