SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNICAL AEROSPACE REPORTS

A Biweekly Publication of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration
VOLUME 44, ISSUE 10 - MAY 19, 2006

19 SPACECRAFT INSTRUMENTATION AND ASTRIONICS
Includes the design, manufacture, or use of devices for the purpose of measuring, detecting, controlling, computing, recording, or processing data related to the operation of space vehicles or platforms.

For related information see also 06 Avionics and Aircraft Instrumentation; for spaceborne instruments not integral to the vehicle itself see 35 Instrumentation and Photography; for spaceborne telescopes and other astronomical instruments see 89 Astronomy.

20060012189 NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, USA

Automated, on-board terrain analysis for precision landings

Rahman, Zia-ur; Jobson, Daniel J.; Woodell, Glenn A.; Hines, Glenn D.; [2006]; 13 pp.; In English; SPIE Defense and Security Symposium 2006, 17-21 Apr. 2006, Orlando, FL, USA; Original contains color and black and white illustrations Contract(s)/Grant(s): NNL04AA02A; No Copyright; Avail.: CASI: A03, Hardcopy

Advances in space robotics technology hinge to a large extent upon the development and deployment of sophisticated new vision-based methods for automated in-space mission operations and scientific survey. To this end, we have developed a new concept for automated terrain analysis that is based upon a generic image enhancement platform|multi-scale retinex (MSR) and visual servo (VS) processing. This pre-conditioning with the MSR and the vs produces a 'canonical' visual representation that is largely independent of lighting variations, and exposure errors. Enhanced imagery is then processed with a biologically inspired two-channel edge detection process, followed by a smoothness based criteria for image segmentation. Landing sites can be automatically determined by examining the results of the smoothness-based segmentation which shows those areas in the image that surpass a minimum degree of smoothness. Though the msr has proven to be a very strong enhancement engine, the other elements of the approach|the vs, terrain map generation, and smoothness-based segmentation|are in early stages of development. Experimental results on data from the Mars Global Surveyor show that the imagery can be processed to automatically obtain smooth landing sites. In this paper, we describe the method used to obtain these landing sites, and also examine the smoothness criteria in terms of the imager and scene characteristics. Several examples of applying this method to simulated and real imagery are shown. Author

Aerospace Engineering; Terrain Analysis; Imaging Techniques; Image Enhancement; Edge Detection; Landing Sites; Robotics

Source: NASA