(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2022-08)
DeVries, Carl; Christian, John A.; Hansen, Michael; Crain, Tim
Future missions to the lunar surface are expected to make use of LIDAR sensors
for navigation during landing. This is especially true when the lunar landing
must be accomplished under lighting conditions that are undesirable for camera based
navigation. Moreover, when local maps of the lunar terrain are also poor or
unavailable to the lander in real-time, concepts from LIDAR odometry (LO) are
highly relevant. This work develops an algorithmic framework for LO suitable for
supporting future lunar exploration missions.
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2022-02)
Molina, Giovanni; Hansen, Michael; Getchius, Joel; Christensen, Randall; Christian, John A.; Stewart, Shaun; Crain, Tim
Intuitive Machines has developed a state-of-the-art precision landing and hazard
avoidance (PLHA) system that will enable its Nova-C lunar lander to safely touch
down on the lunar surface. This system consists of an array of sensors that includes
an inertial measurement unit (IMU), optical camera, and a laser range finder sensor
(LRFS) as well a series of algorithms which process and fuse the sensor data and
produce measurements used in the navigation system. One of the measurements
utilizes image processing and visual odometry (VO) to compute a delta-position
(DPOS) measurement which describes the lander's direction of motion between
two image captures. In this paper, we detail the development and implementation
of this measurement for the Nova-C lander, demonstrate our rigorous testing
methodologies and present our findings and results.