Three-line structured light vision system for non-cooperative satellites in proximity operations

Adapter ring is a commonly used component in non-cooperative satellites, which has high strength and is suitable to be recognized and grasped by the space manipulator. During proximity operations, this circle feature may be occluded by the robot arm or limited field of view. Moreover, the captured images may be underexposed when there is not enough illumination. To address these problems, this paper presents a structured light vision system with three line lasers and a monocular camera. The lasers project lines onto the surface of the satellite, and six break points are formed along both sides of the adapter ring. A closed-form solution for real-time pose estimation is given using these break points. Then, a virtual structured light platform is constructed to simulate synthetic images of the target satellite. Compared with the predefined camera parameters and relative positions, the proposed method is demonstrated to be more effective, especially at a close distance. Besides, a physical space verification system is set up to prove the effectiveness and robustness of our method under different light conditions. Experimental results indicate that it is a practical and effective method for the pose measurement of on-orbit tasks.