Spacecraft rendezvous and docking.: An autonomy assisted human operator approach

The phenomenons and problems encountered when a rendezvous manoeuvre, and possible docking, of two spacecrafts has to be performed, have been the topic for numerous studies, and, details of a variety of scenarios has been analysed. So far, all solutions that has been brought into realization has been based entirely on direct human supervision and control.

This paper describes a vision-based system and methodology, that autonomously generates accurate guidance information that may assist a human operator in performing the tasks associated with both the rendezvous and docking navigation procedures. The method described generates, based on a single camera and a priory information about the target vehicle and orbit data, all necessary guidance information for closed-loop autonomous navigation, from first detection at far distance, to a close up a hold point.

Furthermore, the system provide relative pose information to assist the human operator during the docking phase. The closed loop and operator assistance performance of the system have been assessed using a test bench including human operator, navigation module and high fidelity visualization module.

The tests performed verified the general accuracy, real timeliness and robustness of the system. Especially the pose information proved to be valuable for the human operator, and allows for implementation of automatic safety features as proximity fuse, and target rotation rate synchronisation.