A variety of aerospace applications such as orbital rendezvous, powered descent tothe surface of a celestial object, aircraft landing, and missile intercept require some formof a desired collision. Other aerospace applications such as orbital satellite inspection,formation ying, and air trac control require collision avoidance. A key element ofeach of all these applications is position/velocity state estimation. Since a collision canoften times be detected with a simple inexpensive accelerometer, this paper considersthe addition of an accelerometer-based collision measurement to the state estimationprocess and provides evidence that the information associated with a negative collisionmeasurement, i.e., a collision has not occurred, can provide useful state information andreduce state uncertainties.
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