This thesis describes a method of vision based station keeping and docking for floating robots. Due to the motion disturbances in the environment, these tasks are important to keep the vehicle stabilized relative to an external reference frame. A vision-based tracking system is used to measure the image deformations, as the vehicle moves with respect to a docking station. A planar surface is ch...

Nominal space trajectories are usually designed by solving an optimal control problem that maximizes the payload launch-mass ratio while achieving the primary mission goals. However, uncertainties and disturbances affect the spacecraft dynamics in real scenarios. This draws the designer towards the development of optimal feedback control strategies that assure the satisfaction of the mission go...

Space debris is a rising concern for the sustained operation of our satellites. The population in space is continually growing, both gradually with a steady stream of new launches, and in sudden bursts, as evidenced with the recent collision between the Iridium and inactive COSMOS spacecraft. The problem is most severe in densely populated orbit regimes, where satellites face a sustained presen...

In this paper we discuss the use of vision for underwater vehicles. The work described here has been developed in the context of the European Research Project NARVAL Navigation of Autonomous vehicles via Active Environmental Perception (ESPRIT-LTR project 30185), aiming at designing and implementing reliable navigation systems of limited cost for mobile robots in unstructured environments, with...

This paper introduces a 2 0 visual servoing technique for the station keepiirg of an unmanned underwater vehicle (UUV) with respect to planar targets on the sea bed. The underwater vehicle is subject to sea current disturbances which make it drift from its desired position. Feature points from unmarked objects are extracted and tracked with a sparse feature tracker developed in-house [I]. The s...

In this paper we describe the design and implementation of a control system for automatic vision-based station keeping with an underwater ROV, relative to some visual landmark. First, a region-based tracking system is described that tracks naturally textured landmarks in the image plane, based upon full planar-projective motion models. The implementation of the algorithm is such that it allows ...

This paper describes the use of vision for navigation of mobile robots floating in 3D space. The problem addressed is that of automatic station keeping relative to some naturally textured environmental region. Due to the motion disturbances in the environment (currents), these tasks are important to keep the vehicle stabilized relative to an external reference frame. Assuming short range region...

This thesis primarily describes performance and decision heuristics of human operators intervention with an autonomous formation flight (AFF) system during monitoring of a station-keeping display. Due to mental and physical workloads, automation technologies have been applied to formation flight for precise station-keeping and resultant fuel reduction, shifting control authority from humans to ...