Autonomous Relative Navigation with Laser Range Finder and Inertial Sensor for Uncooperative Spacecraft Rendezvous

This paper presents a novel autonomous relative navigation approach for uncooperative spacecraft rendezvous. The relative navigation algorithm of calculating the relative velocity and position in the inertial frame by using the inertial sensor output is developed. The Kalman filter with the feedback compensation is studied to estimate the error of the calculated relative velocity and position and the accelerometer bias. The relative range and the azimuth and elevation of the line-of-site vector from the laser range finder are used as the Kalman filter measurement. The relative navigation algorithm and the Kalman filter presented in this paper do not depends on any information from the object spacecraft, so they are suitable for uncooperative spacecraft rendezvous. The simulation results show the relative velocity and position provided by the autonomous relative navigation approach presented in this paper can meet the desired accuracy and the accelerometer bias can be estimated efficiently.