Spacecraft Pose Estimation For Non- Cooperative Rendezvous Based On Feature Codebook

The goal of this master’s thesis is the implementation and analysis of an algorithm able to detect the pose of a non-cooperative spacecraft in autonomous rendezvous scenarios. The algorithm is based on a codebook approach, where features reduced in dimensionality with a two-dimensional principal component algorithm are associated to attitudes. The training set of attitudes is generated using a 3D-CAD model of the non-cooperative spacecraft, with the rotations in the 3D space defined by means of random uniform quaternions. The document begins with a review of the different methods for spacecraft pose estimation under non-cooperative rendezvous scenarios, the Principal Component Analysis with some of its two-dimensional variations, and a study of the methods for sampling all the possible orientations of a 3D-object. Next, the proposed architecture of the system is described and tested, over a set of tests designed to simulate the different possible environments in a real case of application. The document is concluded with the discussed results, conclusions and guidelines for future work. The proposed algorithm allows to estimate accurately the pose under different illumination conditions and distances to the spacecraft, with a moderate computational load and without previous knowledge of the spacecraft’s pose.