LANDING POINT SEARCHING DEVICE, FLYING OBJECT USING THEREWITH AND LANDING POINT EVALUATING DEVICE

摘要

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To search a ground surface part suitable for a landing by monitoring the ground surface states of the moon, planets or the earth.;SOLUTION: A stereo processing part 8 calculates a distance d from a flying object to the ground surface part for every ground surface part obtainable by dividing the ground surface within an observation range in a matrix form based on stereo images imaged by a stereo camera 5. As a result, distance information dij showing the whole rugged state of the ground surface can be obtained within the observation range shown by an i-j coordinate. A search processing part 10 divides ground surface parts which are mutually adjacent and close in distance to be regarded as flat ground surfaces in the distance information dij. This divided flat ground surface part group is provided with a prescribed condition, the point is extracted as a landing candidate point. The search processing part 10 individually evaluates the ground surface states (such as planarity, flatness, a degree of inclination and an existing state of an obstacle) of the landing candidate point based on the distance information dij when the landing candidate point is extracted. A controller 2 specifies a landing point among the landing candidate points based on the evaluation result.;COPYRIGHT: (C)2001,JPO