Spaceborne LIDAR-based pose determination of uncooperative targets

This paper deals with the problem of spaceborne pose determination of uncooperative targets, e.g. space debris. An optimized template matching approach is adopted for pose initialization, while different variants of the Iterative Closest Point (ICP) algorithm are considered for pose tracking. The algorithms process 3D point clouds generated by a scanning LIDAR. Algorithm performance is investigated within a numerical simulation environment reproducing realistic conditions in terms of target configuration and sensor operation. Results demonstrate that the proposed algorithms provide a pose estimate with 0.1° accuracy in attitude and sub-centimeter accuracy in relative position, operating with sparse point clouds.