Journal of Astronautics ›› 2014, Vol. 35 ›› Issue (12): 1430-1436.doi: 10.3873/j.issn.1000-1328.2014.12.012

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A High Accuracy Target Positioning Method for Autonomous Rendezvous and Docking Between Spacecrafts

ZHANG Ying jin, QIN Shi yin, HU Xiao hui   

  1. School of Automation Science and Electrical Engineering, Beihang University, Beijing 100191, China
  • Received:2013-12-09 Revised:2014-05-16 Online:2014-12-15 Published:2014-12-25

Abstract:

According to the practical background and technical requirements for autonomous rendezvous and docking (ARVD), a high accuracy target positioning method is proposed by combining Gaussian surface fitting with bilinear interpolation in view of the performance indices such as real-time and high accuracy as well as strong anti-disturbance in the process of ARVD. The analysis of target gray-level distribution is employed to carry out the bilinear interpolation and the Gaussian surface fitting in which both real target pixels and interpolated sub-pixel points can be used so that the positioning accuracy can achieve sub-pixel level for the estimation of target center position. A series of experimental results with both simulation images and real images demonstrate that the proposed method has advantages of both excellent positioning accuracy and real-time performance in that the overall positioning error can reach approximately 1/20 pixels. Therefore, the proposed method may be applied in the ARVD, space teleoperation and other relative motion fields to play a important role in engineering practices.

Key words: Cooperative target recognition, Target positioning, Gaussian surface fitting, Autonomous rendezvous and docking (ARVD)

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