Microwave and Video Sensor Fusion for the Shape Extraction of Space Objects

摘要

For robots to perform meaningful operations in space, some type of sophisticated vision system is required. Such a system should provide the robot with three dimensional (3D) information about its surrounding work space and the objects on which it will operate. The problem of remotely determining an object's 3D shape is difficult in any situation, but the space environment presents special problems due to the ambient illumination and lack of atmosphere. The exact shape of an object can be determined through the analysis of shading in an optical image, but frequently, shading details are obscured by the high intensity specular reflections which occur in space images. An alternate sensor for robotic applications is microwave radar. Some 3D information is available from time domain radar imaging, but high resolution radar is prohibitively expensive and complex. A new system is proposed for the fusion of optical image data and radar scattering cross sections. The radar data is used in an iterative procedure which generates successive approximations to the target shape by minimizing the error between a computed scattering transfer matrix, and the observed radar returns. The image data is incorporated by supplying an initial estimate of shape through knowledge of the two dimensional silhouette and shading models. These components are assembled into a larger iterative process designed to refine the estimate of 3D shape and obtain the best possible description of the attitude and motion of the target.