Vision-aided Inertial Navigation for Pinpoint Lunar Landing
- Paper number
IAC-06-A3.6.07
- Author
Dr. Shuang Li, Harbin Institute of Technology, China
- Coauthor
Mr. Cui Hutao, Harbin Institute of Technology, China
- Coauthor
Mr. Pingyuan Cui, Harbin Institute of Technology, China
- Year
2006
- Abstract
Recently, lunar exploration missions have received much attention in Japanese, India, China, European and U.S. space agencies. China's Chang'e moon exploration project comprises three phases: orbiting, soft landing and a sample round trip including a landing. Chang'e-I lunar probe, the moon-orbiting satellite, will be launched in 2007. Chang'e-II, the soft landing of an unmanned vehicle on the moon's surface, is projected to taken place by 2010. Chang'e-III will entail collecting samples of lunar soil with an unmanned vehicle that will then return to earth, and should be completed by 2020. The Deep Space Exploration Research Center, Harbin Institute of Technology (DSERC-HIT) is engaged in developing autonomous lunar landing technology. Since the safe and precision landing technology for the Chang'e-II phase is the lack and immature, landing safety and accuracy are the primary goal of Chang'e-II study. From the viewpoint of landing safety and technological reliability, ideal landing site should be close to flat regions, such as Moon Sea area. However, form the scientific viewpoint, such areas have little scientific value and have already been exported by Apollo and Surveyor. Thus Chang'e-II landing site is assumed as a central peak of a big crater in Moon Sea. Precise, soft landings of unmanned spacecraft on the moon's surface, close to a predetermined target landing spot in an area of rough terrain, is a difficult and risky task. Accurate navigation relative to the surface is indispensable, together with autonomous detection and avoidance of possible hazards like boulders or steep slopes. This is being made possible by developments in optical sensors based navigation and guidance techniques and on board processing technology. This paper proposes an autonomous pinpoint navigation and guidance scheme based on optical sensors for soft landing spacecrafts on moon. Camera and lidar are widely used optical sensors for various deep space missions. In order to correct the bias and long-term drift of inertial measurement unit (IMU), optical navigation camera is added up as vision navigation sensor (VisNav). Vision-aided inertial navigation provides relative state variables estimation between spacecraft and pre-selected landing site with high accuracy. The digital elevation map (DEM) data, coming from lidar light detection and ranging (LIDAR) sensor, is then analyzed for autonomous obstacle detection and avoidance. Hazard potential function is calculated to distinguish safe landing areas from hazardous regions. If the pre-selected landing site lies in the obstacle regions, obstacle avoidance maneuver is activated and new landing lying safe region is reselected.
- Abstract document
- Manuscript document
IAC-06-A3.6.07.pdf (🔒 authorized access only).
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