Measure for relative position and pose of RVD spacecrafts based on trinocular vision method

With the continuous development of Manned spaceflight and space station, autonomous spacecraft Rendezvous and Docking Technique becomes more important. During the spacecraft's final approach phase of Rendezvous and Docking (RVD), real-time accurate measurement of the relative position and orientation parameters between the two spacecrafts is the key to success. For Rendezvous and Docking spacecrafts position and orientation parameters of the process of measurement problems, a trinocular measurement method was used. This paper not only prescribed the measuring principle of trinocular, but also established a non-linear mathematical model based on trinocular vision. To solve relative position and pose of RVD spacecrafts based on trinocular vision method, the non-linear mathematical model was transferred into a non-linear optimization problem; and was completed by Levenberg-Marquardt algorithm. Experiments with simulated data show that compared with linear methods of binocular vision and trinocular, this non-linear trinocular method can reduce the impact on the image matching error, meanwhile improve the located positioning accuracy of feature points and increase the reliability of measurement system.