Non-cooperative pose estimation for cubesat based on point set registration

The non-cooperative target relative pose estimation technique is the essential issue for spatial on-orbit service missions. The vision based imaging systems usually measure the required attitudes with the help of special feature points, have strong dependence on single feature point and poor robustness in the complex space environment. In this paper, aiming at the pose estimation task for the well-known cubesat in space non-cooperative target in the space missions such as automatic rendezvous and docking, the binocular stereo vision matching is adopted; the partial three-dimensional (3D) point set data of the target satellite are obtained based on triangular measurement principle. Then, the point set registration is utilized to solve the transformation parameters between the measured 3D data and the known model. Finally, the relative attitude estimation of the target cubesat is achieved. This method is based on dense point set, hence ensures stronger measurement robustness. This method can also be extended to solve the relative attitude estimation of other non-cooperative targets. The comparison measurement experiment with high precision turntable verifies the accuracy and effectiveness of the proposed method.