STS-128 on-orbit demonstration of the TriDAR targetless rendezvous and docking sensor

Neptec has developed a vision system for autonomous rendezvous and docking in space that does not require the use of cooperative markers, such as retro-reflectors, on the target spacecraft. 12The system uses an active TriDAR 3D sensor along with embedded model based tracking algorithms to provide, out of the box, 6 degree of freedom (6DOF) relative pose information in real-time. The TriDAR (triangulation + LIDAR) sensing technology combines active triangulation and Time-of-Flight (TOF) ranging techniques within a single optical path. This design takes advantage of the complementary nature of these two technologies to provide optimal 3 dimensional data from several kilometers all the way to docking. A thermal imager is also included to provide bearing information at long range.