Self-Alignment/Navigation Performance Analysis in the Accelerometer Resonance State Generated by Dither Motion of Ring Laser Gyroscope in Laser Inertial Navigation System

In this paper, we theoretically analyzed the self-alignment/navigation performance in the accelerometer resonance state generated by dither motion of ring laser gyroscope in LINS and verified it through simulation. As a result of analysis, it is confirmed that the amplitude of the accelerometer measurement amplified in the accelerometer resonance state is decreased in the process of sampling per the navigation calculation period and that frequency is changed by the aliasing effect too. It was also analysed that the attitude error in self-alignment is determined by the amplitude/frequency of the accelerometer measurement, the gain of the self-alignment loop, and the velocity and position error in the navigation is determined by the amplitude/frequency/phase error of the accelerometer measurement. This analysis and simulation results show that the self-alignment and navigation performance is not be degraded only when the amplification factor of the accelerometer measurement in the accelerometer resonance state is 3 or less

Nonlinear Attitude Control Of Underactuated Spacecraft

This dissertation investigates the nonlinear control of the attitude for an underactuated rigid-body spacecraft system in the body-orbital and inertial frames. The problem involving the stabilization of the body-orbital attitude of an underactuated output-feedback system is examined. Using sliding mode control in conjunction with finite-time nonlinear observer, a novel observer-based control law is rigorously analyzed and proven to achieve attitude convergence. Under time-varying disturbances, inertia matrix uncertainties, and high initial errors, the proposed novel law achieves attitude convergence for three-axis stability and ultimate boundedness within 5 degrees and 0.01 deg/s, for attitude error norm and angular velocity norm, respectively. Next, the attitude control problem is rigorously analyzed in the inertial frame, where the underactuated rigid-body spacecraft system equations of motion are highly nonlinear, and the linearized equations of motion are not controllable. To this end, a generalized velocity-free time-varying state feedback controller is developed to achieve globally exponential stability with respect to the homogenous norm and proven to provide ultimate boundedness of all signals with 5 degrees attitude error norm and 0.5 rad/s angular velocity error norm. Finally, the inertial frame attitude stabilization problem is treated as an optimal control problem. For this case, the Legendre pseudospectral method is used to discretized the spacecraft dynamics into Legendre-Gauss-Lobatto (LGL) node points, where the Lagrange polynomial interpolation is applied to obtain a suitable candidate optimal control sequence. Model predictive control is used to implement the optimal control in predefined control windows sequentially to achieve three-axis stability for a rest-to-rest maneuver within 0.3 orbit.

Nonlinear Attitude Control Of Underactuated Spacecraft

This dissertation investigates the nonlinear control of the attitude for an underactuated rigid-body spacecraft system in the body-orbital and inertial frames. The problem involving the stabilization of the body-orbital attitude of an underactuated output-feedback system is examined. Using sliding mode control in conjunction with finite-time nonlinear observer, a novel observer-based control law is rigorously analyzed and proven to achieve attitude convergence. Under time-varying disturbances, inertia matrix uncertainties, and high initial errors, the proposed novel law achieves attitude convergence for three-axis stability and ultimate boundedness within 5 degrees and 0.01 deg/s, for attitude error norm and angular velocity norm, respectively. Next, the attitude control problem is rigorously analyzed in the inertial frame, where the underactuated rigid-body spacecraft system equations of motion are highly nonlinear, and the linearized equations of motion are not controllable. To this end, a generalized velocity-free time-varying state feedback controller is developed to achieve globally exponential stability with respect to the homogenous norm and proven to provide ultimate boundedness of all signals with 5 degrees attitude error norm and 0.5 rad/s angular velocity error norm. Finally, the inertial frame attitude stabilization problem is treated as an optimal control problem. For this case, the Legendre pseudospectral method is used to discretized the spacecraft dynamics into Legendre-Gauss-Lobatto (LGL) node points, where the Lagrange polynomial interpolation is applied to obtain a suitable candidate optimal control sequence. Model predictive control is used to implement the optimal control in predefined control windows sequentially to achieve three-axis stability for a rest-to-rest maneuver within 0.3 orbit.

Roto-Translational Control of Spacecraft in Low Earth Orbit Using Environmental Forces and Torques

In this paper, relative orbit and attitude adaptive controllers are integrated to perform roto-translational maneuvers for CubeSats equipped with a Drag Maneuvering Device (DMD). The DMD enables the host CubeSat with modulation of aerodynamic forces/torques and gravity gradient torque. Adaptive controllers for independent orbital and attitude maneuvers are revisited to account for traslational-attitude coupling while compensating for uncertainty in parameters such as atmospheric density, drag/lift coefficients, location of the Center of Mass (CoM) and inertia matrix. Uniformly ultimately bounded convergence of the attitude error and relative orbit states is guaranteed by Lyapunov-based stability analysis for the integrated roto-translational maneuver. A simulation example of an along-track formation maneuver between two CubeSats with simultaneous attitude control using only environmental forces and torques is presented to validate the controller.

Study on Real-Time Point Cloud Superimposition on Camera Image to Assist Environmental Three-Dimensional Laser Scanning

Recently, three-dimensional (3D) laser scanning technology using terrestrial laser scanner (TLS) has been widely used in the fields of plant manufacturing, civil engineering and construction, and surveying. It is desirable for the operator to be able to immediately and intuitively confirm the scanned point cloud to reduce unscanned regions and acquire scanned point clouds of high quality. Therefore, in this study, we developed a method to superimpose the point cloud on the actual environment to assist environmental 3D laser measurements, allowing the operator to check the scanned point cloud or unscanned regions in real time using the camera image. The method included extracting the correspondences of the camera image and the image generated by point clouds by considering unscanned regions, estimating the camera position and attitude in the point cloud by sampling correspondence points, and superimposing the scanned point cloud and unscanned regions on the camera image. When the proposed method was applied to two types of environments, that is, a boiler room and university office, the estimated camera image had a mean position error of approximately 150 mm and mean attitude error of approximately 1°, while the scanned point cloud and unscanned regions were superimposed on the camera image on a tablet PC at a rate of approximately 1 fps.

Crop Row Segmentation and Detection in Paddy Fields Based on Treble-Classification Otsu and Double-Dimensional Clustering Method

Visual navigation is developing rapidly and is of great significance to improve agricultural automation. The most important issue involved in visual navigation is extracting a guidance path from agricultural field images. Traditional image segmentation methods may fail to work in paddy field, for the colors of weed, duckweed, and eutrophic water surface are very similar to those of real rice seedings. To deal with these problems, a crop row segmentation and detection algorithm, designed for complex paddy fields, is proposed. Firstly, the original image is transformed to the grayscale image and then the treble-classification Otsu method classifies the pixels in the grayscale image into three clusters according to their gray values. Secondly, the binary image is divided into several horizontal strips, and feature points representing green plants are extracted. Lastly, the proposed double-dimensional adaptive clustering method, which can deal with gaps inside a single crop row and misleading points between real crop rows, is applied to obtain the clusters of real crop rows and the corresponding fitting line. Quantitative validation tests of efficiency and accuracy have proven that the combination of these two methods constitutes a new robust integrated solution, with attitude error and distance error within 0.02° and 10 pixels, respectively. The proposed method achieved better quantitative results than the detection method based on typical Otsu under various conditions.

An Aided Navigation Method Based on Strapdown Gravity Gradiometer

The gravity gradient is the second derivative of gravity potential. A gravity gradiometer can measure the small change of gravity at two points, which contains more abundant navigation and positioning information than gravity. In order to solve the problem of passive autonomous, long-voyage, and high-precision navigation and positioning of submarines, an aided navigation method based on strapdown gravity gradiometer is proposed. The unscented Kalman filter framework is used to realize the fusion of inertial navigation and gravity gradient information. The performance of aided navigation is analyzed and evaluated from six aspects: long voyage, measurement update period, measurement noise, database noise, initial error, and inertial navigation system device level. When the parameters are set according to the benchmark parameters and after about 10 h of simulation, the results show that the attitude error, velocity error, and position error of the gravity gradiometer aided navigation system are less than 1 arcmin, 0.1 m/s, and 33 m, respectively.