A vision-based approach for high accuracy assessment of satellite attitude

In this work we present the achievements of the approach we have conceived to estimate in real time the attitude of a satellite endowed with an integral camera looking to the Earth. We have implemented the dynamical model that de-scribes how to reconstruct the spatial orientation of the camera using couples of subsequent views, passing through six reference frames. An in-depth analysis of the influences on the accuracy of the different sources of error arising when implementing the dynamical model has been carried out, from the theoretical framework to the laboratory pro-totype. Through these studies we have been able to charac-terize, and often overcome, the traps hidden at the develop-ment stage to propose the first vision based approach to de-termine with very a high accuracy the attitude of a satellite in a stand-alone system. Although the achievements refer to a classical mission critical application, the methodologi-cal approach, the choices accomplished and the results pre-sented are of general interest. 1