Visual servoing for an autonomous rendezvous and capture system

Many autonomous space systems are under development to economically extend the lives of space systems, either by orbit modification or replenishment of consumables. This paper explains the theory behind and demonstrates experimentally the terminal control portion of an autonomous rendezvous and capture system. The system will grapple the launch bolt holes of common satellite interfaces in order to minimize the necessary client hardware. This is accomplished using a stereoscopic vision system using an edge detector and Hough transform to locate the target point. This project demonstrated the use of off-the-shelf hardware and open source algorithms to accomplish its objective.