An Open Research Facility for Vision‐Based Navigation Onboard the International Space Station

Abstract

This paper describes the VERTIGO Goggles, a hardware upgrade to the SPHERES satellites that enables visionbased navigation research in the 6 degree-of-freedom, microgravity environment of the International Space Station (ISS). The Goggles include stereo cameras, an embedded x86 computer, a high-speed wireless communications system, and the associated electromechanical and software systems. The Goggles were designed to be a modular, expandable, and upgradable "open research test bed" that have been used for a variety of other experiments by external researchers. In February 2013, the Goggles successfully completed a hardware checkout on the ISS and was used for initial vision-based navigation research. This checkout included a successful camera calibration by an astronaut onboard the ISS. This paper describes the requirements, design, and operation of this test bed as well as the experimental results of its first checkout operations. C 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Open Vision System for Low-Cost Robotics Education

“…Tweddle et al [27] present another use of a navigation system based on vision, and internationally recognized by researchers. This study describes the VERTIGO vision system, a hardware update to the SPHERES satellites that allows the investigation of navigation based on vision in the environment of 6 degrees of freedom and microgravity of the International Space Station (ISS).…”

Inertial Properties Estimation of a Passive On-orbit Object Using Polhode Analysis

“…Three Systron Donner BEI Gyrochip II single-axis rate gyroscopes are orthogonally mounted in the SPHERES geometric frame G s and used to measure angular velocity. Stereoscopic image data was obtained using the Visual Estimation for Relative Tracking and Inspection of Generic Objects (VERTIGO) Goggles, a hardware addition to the SPHERES satellites that enables vision-based navigation research in the 6-DOF, microgravity environment on the ISS [10,19]). The major components of the SPHERES-VERTIGO test platform are shown in Figure 10.…”

Guidance, Navigation, and Control for the Eddy Brake Method

“…Current pose estimation sensors for proximity operations can be divided into two major groups; passive camera-based sensors or active light detection and ranging (LIDARs) [30,31]. Passive sensors may work in the visible range or infrared range and they have lower hardware complexity than active sensors, they are cheaper and their mass and power consumption is lower [32,33].…”

“…Typical accuracies achieved during in-orbit tests with passive camera sensors lie in the range of a few centimeters for the relative distance and a few degrees for the relative attitude [31,33]. Additional sensors such as the TRIDAR have been tested on-board the Space Shuttle for automatic acquisition of the ISS and real-time tracking [34].…”