Autonomy for complex maneuvers
The Vision Based Navigation (VBN) system is a dedicated software solution for performing complex navigation maneuvers requiring target identification and tracking. The VBN system has been built for any rendezvous, proximity operations and docking (RPOD) mission, including visual inspection, in-orbit (on-orbit) servicing, refueling, and many more.
Its performance has been verified through multiple hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) laboratory tests while simulating challenging lighting conditions including sun glare, target object shadowing and poor illumination using only a monocular camera.
The video below shows an excerpt of the VBN test in a space robotics laboratory for a typical target/chaser scenario in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) where you can see the performance of our target identification, tracking and pose estimation algorithms in real-time in the “VBN Camera feed” window. The target is a 6U cubesat mockup with limited distinguishing surface features to complicate target detection and tracking even further.
Video showcasing the Vision Based Navigation laboratory tests
This video is captured in real-time running VBN in the Zero-G space robotics laboratory