Abstract:

A novel visionbased relative position and attitude estimation algorithm  using points to regions correspondence is presented for close formation flying. Given the points on the leader satellite surface and the convex regions in which the correspondent image points lie on the follower satellite image plane, combining dualquaternion and convex optimization mathematical tools to take full advantage of the simplicity of the dual quaternion description of the coordinate system transformation, the convex optimization problem representation is formulated by using dualquaternion representing the rotation and translation, by means of which the relative position and attitude parameters are estimated. This algorithm uses the advantage of the dual quaternion description which is better than the traditional quaternion coordinate system transformation, and using convex optimization can reduce the requirement of precise point to point correspondence in the traditional algorithm. Simulation shows that the algorithm can meet the demand of relative pose estimation accuracy and has a good robustness for close formation flying, and this algorithm can provide a reference for vision relative pose estimation between various spacecraft in the current space mission.