A High Performance Image Processing Unit for On-orbit Servicing
- Paper number
IAC-06-D1.2.03
- Author
Dr. Shinichi Kimura, National Institute of Information and Communication Technology, Japan
- Year
2006
- Abstract
With the maturation of space technology, there is an increasing focus on the maintenance of spacecraft and the space environment. The application of space robotics and rendezvous technologies means new concepts of on-orbit servicing (OOS) are emerging for maintaining satellites in orbit. In Japan, we had some good experiences with OOS technologies in experiments with ETS-VII and MFD NICT (National Institute of Information and Communications Technology) has proposed an Orbital Maintenance System (OMS), which is a rescue-and-removal satellite-servicing system for telecommunications satellites, and has conducted research on related technologies3-8 (Fig. 1). The OMS could potentially play a role not only in rescuing telecommunications satellites but also in mitigating the space-debris problem and maintaining orbital conditions. One of the biggest challenges in on-orbit maintenance is the development of autonomous rendezvous technologies. The rescue satellite must be able to approach the target satellite before it falls out of orbit. To do this, the rescue satellite must first recognize the target and determine its relative position. To achieve these technologies, NICT is now developing high-performance image capture and analyzing unit called a Diverse Information Visioning Extension Camera (DIVE-CAM). The DIVE-CAM, which was developed by NICT based on COTS technologies, contains a SVGA resolution COTS C-MOS imager and ARM9 32-bit RISC processor. The processing unit of the DIVE-CAM has a calculation capability of up to 200 MIPS, which means that we can utilize the processor not only for image acquisition control but also for image processing functions such as image compression and target recognition. The processor is based on the very popular LINUX operating system, which will reduce the effort required for software development and implementation. DIVE-CAM also have 2 DOF motion platform to adjust line of sight. This function will be utilized for autonomous target tracking and target search. In this paper, we are going to introduce concept of DIVE-CAM and its role in the on-orbit servicing. We are also going to present development and verification process of DIVE-CAM,
- Abstract document
- Manuscript document
IAC-06-D1.2.03.pdf (🔒 authorized access only).
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