Study of Image Processing Methods for Space Debris Capture

Abstract

The number of space debris in Earth's orbit is steadily increasing, and the micro-robotic satellite is expected to remove the space debris actively. The stereo camera has been employed to navigate the robotic satellite to the debris by measuring the position and attitude of the debris. In this study, we propose and evaluate an image processing algorithm with the stereo camera for extracting circular portions of the target debris in several lighting environments.