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Attitude estimation for large field-of-view sensors

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Abstract

The QUEST measurement noise model for unit vector observations has been widely used in spacecraft attitude estimation for more than twenty years. It was derived under the approximation that the noise lies in the tangent plane of the respective unit vector and is axially symmetrically distributed about the vector. For large field-of-view sensors, however, this approximation may be poor, especially when the measurement falls near the edge of the field of view. In this paper a new measurement noise model is derived based on a realistic noise distribution in the focal plane of a large field-of-view sensor, which shows significant differences from the QUEST model for unit vector observations far away from the sensor boresight. An extended Kalman filter for attitude estimation is then designed with the new measurement noise model. Simulation results show that with the new measurement model the extended Kalman filter achieves better estimation performance using large field-of-view sensor observations.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering, University at Buffalo, State University of New York, Amherst, NY, 14260-4400, USA

    Yang Cheng (Postdoctoral Research Fellow) & John L. Crassidis (Associate Professor)

  2. NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Guidance, Navigation and Control Systems Engineering Branch, Greenbelt, MD, 20771, USA

    F. Landis Markley (Aerospace Engineer)

Authors
  1. Yang Cheng
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  2. John L. Crassidis
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  3. F. Landis Markley
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Correspondence to Yang Cheng.

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Cheng, Y., Crassidis, J.L. & Markley, F.L. Attitude estimation for large field-of-view sensors. J of Astronaut Sci 54, 433–448 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03256499

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