Angles-only-based noncooperative proximity operation for tethered space robot

The potential of employing vision sensors, such as optical or infrared camera, has been already recognized for autonomous noncooperative proximity operation. However, the use of camera during noncooperative proximity operation is not trivial because camera can only provide line-of-sight direction of the target and suffers from the well-know limitation of determining distance. In this paper, we propose an angles-only-based navigation and control approach for proximity operation with application to tethered space robot (TSR). The spacecraft not only approaches to the target following an optimized trajectory, but also is capable of ensuring high orbital navigation precision during the proximity process. Simulations have illustrated that the effectiveness of the proposed framework.