To determination relative attitude between two space objects on a rocking base, an integrated system based on vision and dual IMU (inertial determination unit) is built up. The determination system fuses the attitude information of vision with the angular determinations of dual IMU by extended Kalman filter (EKF) to obtain the relative attitude. One IMU (master) is attached to the measured motion object and the other (slave) to the rocking base. As the determination output of inertial sensor is relative to inertial frame, thus angular rate of the master IMU includes not only motion of the measured object relative to inertial frame but also the rocking base relative to inertial frame, where the latter can be seen as redundant harmful movement information for relative attitude determination between the measured object and the rocking base. The slave IMU here assists to remove the motion information of rocking base relative to inertial frame from the master IMU. The proposed integrated attitude determination system is tested on practical experimental platform. And experiment results with superior precision and reliability show the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed attitude determination system.

Date Published: 12 January 2018
PDF: 9 pages
Proc. SPIE 10621, 2017 International Conference on Optical Instruments and Technology: Optoelectronic Measurement Technology and Systems, 106210U (12 January 2018); doi: 10.1117/12.2286826

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 10621:
2017 International Conference on Optical Instruments and Technology: Optoelectronic Measurement Technology and Systems
Jigui Zhu; Hwa-Yaw Tam; Kexin Xu; Hai Xiao; Liquan Dong, Editor(s)