Georgia Tech Research Corporation

Mehregan Dor

Panagiotis Tsiotras

Travis Driver

An exemplary system and method are disclosed for a standalone vision-based system for autonomous online navigation, e.g., around an unknown target small body. The exemplary system (also referred to as AstroSLAM) is predicated on the formulation of the SLAM problem as an incrementally growing factor graph. Using the GTSAM library and the iSAM2 engine, the exemplary system and method combine sensor fusion with the prior orbital motion to provide navigation and parameter estimation that improves the performance over a baseline SLAM implementation. The exemplary system and method can incorporate orbital motion constraints into the factor graph by devising a relative dynamics factor that can link the relative pose of the spacecraft to the problem of predicting trajectories stemming from the motion of the spacecraft in the vicinity of the small body.

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Atlanta, GA, United States of America

Mehregan Dor