Vision based navigation by landmark for robotic explorer

摘要

The rendezvous and landing missions are very significant for scientific explorations. In such missions, the navigation and guidance based on image data is very important. The spacecraft Hayabusa performed the descent flights to the target asteroid Itokawa in November of 2005. To accurately determine the spacecraft position, a landmark tracking scheme with the help of the ground operation was introduced and developed in the Hayabusa mission. The Hayabusa project team developed new tools that combined human assist with the computer aided terminal display. The proposed landmark tracking scheme contributed to the successful precise navigation to the specified area on the surface. This paper presents a visual navigation method with the landmark tracking used for the Hayabusa mission.