Abstract
The autonomous guidance of a spacecraft lander requires extensive testing to develop and prove the technology. Methods such as machine vision for navigation and both vision and LIDAR for hazard avoidance are being studied and developed to provide precise, robust lander guidance systems. A virtual test environment which can simulate these instruments is a vital tool to aid this work. When available, terrain elevation models can provide a base for simulation but they frequently contain artifacts, gaps or may not have the required resolution. We propose novel techniques to model heavily cratered surfaces for testing planetary landers by combining crater models and fractal terrain to create a multi-resolution mesh for simulating a spacecraft descent and landing. The synthetically enhanced models are evaluated by comparing enhanced terrain based on Clementine/RADAR data with higher resolution terrain models from Selene and Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter to show that the artificial models are suitable for testing planetary lander systems.
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© 2014 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be
obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 2916-2928 |
Number of pages | 13 |
Journal | IEEE Transactions on Aerospace and Electronic Systems |
Volume | 50 |
Issue number | 4 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - Oct 2014 |