High precision and fast estimation of position and attitude measurement for space targets

Abstract In this paper, a high accuracy and fast speed position and attitude estimation algorithm of space targets is proposed. The central idea of the proposed algorithm is to solve the pose estimation problem with fast speed, high accuracy and noise-resistance by designing an improved orthogonal iteration algorithm with optimized absolute orientation solution. The predominant advantage of this technique is that it avoids the poor convergence or convergence failure problem caused by the weak perspective projection. By selecting the closed-form solution to initialize parameters, this algorithm improves the accuracy with negligible additional computational time. The proposed technique only needs to observe the targets at different orientations that unknown to observers, and the objective function of the collinearity error based on object space is established, thus the estimated parameters can be subsequently computed. Simulation and field experiment are conducted simultaneously. Results show that the algorithm we proposed performs higher accuracy and faster speed than the current employed algorithms, and the noise-resistance also outperforms others in experiment. The maximum estimation relative error of three euler angles doesn’t exceed 0.38%. This technique is very significant for high accuracy solution of position and attitude measurement for space target.