Dynamic pose estimation of uncooperative space targets based on monocular vision.

A novel algorithm of dynamic pose estimation for monocular visual sensor is proposed in this paper. The sensor is principally composed of two 1D turntables, one collimated laser, and one industrial camera. In particular, the proposed algorithm is suitable for the cases of uncooperative targets. By analyzing the motion of a laser beam based on quaternion, the functional detection algorithm is derived from the position information of multiple scanning points. Furthermore, the depth recovery based on a nonparametric model is a key step in the pose calculation, which is unnecessary to make use of the calibration parameters of an industrial camera. It is, however, effective to avoid the influence of camera distortion and calibration error. After establishing a test platform, simulation and experiments for pose estimation are carried out. The experimental results show that the maximum error is 0.98° at a range of 500 mm, which proves that the proposed algorithm is accurate and effective.