Spacecraft visual servoing with adaptive zooming for non-cooperative rendezvous

Abstract

The utilization of zooming cameras during a non-cooperative rendezvous in space is investigated in this paper. An image-based controller, utilizing visual servoing techniques usually applied to ground-based robotic systems, is designed for the particular problem of far-to-close approach of a spacecraft to a non-cooperative object. The controller directly utilizes the visual features from image frames of the noncooperative target for computing both attitude and orbital maneuvers concurrently. The additional feature derived from the utilization of the zooming camera gives a greater versatility to the maneuvers if compared with the classic fixed optics approaches. The stability of the proposed controller is proven analytically in the invariant space, and its viability is explored through the application to a realistic space debris removal scenario.