Spacecraft Pose Estimation Based on Different Camera Models

Spacecraft pose estimation is an important technology to maintain or change the spacecraft orientation in space.For spacecraft pose estimation,when two spacecraft are relatively distant,the depth information of the space point is less than that of the measuring distance,so the camera model can be seen as a weak perspective projection model.In this paper,a spacecraft pose estimation algorithm based on four symmetrical points of the spacecraft outline is proposed.The analytical solution of the spacecraft pose is obtained by solving the weak perspective projection model,which can satisfy the requirements of the measurement model when the measurement distance is long.The optimal solution is obtained from the weak perspective projection model to the perspective projection model,which can meet the measurement requirements when the measuring distance is small.The simulation results show that the proposed algorithm can obtain better results,even though the noise is large.

3D Motion Estimation and Motion Fusion by Affine Region Matching

In this paper,a new method is presented for 3D motion estimation by image region correspon- dences using stereo cameras.Under the weak perspectivity assumption,we first employ the moment tensor theory(Cyganski and Orr)to compute the monocular affine transformations relating images taken by the same camera at different time instants and the binocular affine transformations relating images taken by different cameras at the same time instant.We then show that 3D motion can he recovered from these 2D transformations.A space-time fusion strategy is proposed to aim at robust results.No knowledge of point correspondences is required in the above processes and the computa- lions involved are linear.To find corresponding image regions,new affine invariants,which show stronger invariance,are derived in term of tensor contraction theory.Experiments on real motion images are conducted to verify the proposed method.