Landing site selection method and apparatus of the spacecraft

摘要

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To guarantee safe landing by obtaining a multi-value picture image which displays the distribution of brightness by photographing the vicinity of a scheduled landing point to generate a binary value picture image, generating a distance conversion picture image by performing distance conversion which is represented by distance from a picture image boundary of this binary value picture image, and calculating a landing point. ;SOLUTION: When the altitude of a space aircraft 1 is reduced and the space aircraft 1 reaches the altitude where it can observe a land form of a moon surface, a scheduled region for landing of the space aircraft on the moon surface is photographed by a CCD camera 10. The photographed picture image is represented in number and value based on the brightness per pixel of the image which is photographed the next time, is output as a multi-value picture image signal, and is stored like matrix in a picture image memory 21. Next, this multi-value picture image is represented by a binary value, and then a filtering computing means 23 makes a shrunk filter act on the binary value picture image to perform distance conversion. A region of which value becomes the maximum value among the distance conversion picture images which are obtained indicates a central region of a flat part which is the remotest from an obstacle and is a point which enables safe landing to select the optimum landing point among these candidate points.;COPYRIGHT: (C)1998,JPO