ESA GNC Conference Papers Repository

PERIGEO is an R&D project, funded by the INNPRONTA 2011-2014 programme from Spanish CDTI, which aims to investigate the use of UAV technologies and processes for the validation of space oriented technologies. For this purpose, among different space missions and technologies, a set of activities for absolute and relative navigation are being carried out to deal with the attitude and position estimation problem from a temporal image sequence from a camera on the visible spectrum and/or Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) sensor. The process is covered entirely: from sensor measurements and data acquisition (images, LiDAR ranges and angles), data pre-processing (calibration and co-registration of camera and LIDAR data), features and landmarks extraction from the images and image/LiDAR-based state estimation. The activities envisaged in PERIGEO cover the development and validation of algorithms and technology testing on UAVs under representative conditions. The first activity has been carried out through the use of synthetic measurement produced with different SW tools or existing (and representative) camera and LIDAR images databases. As an intermediate step between simulation and real environment, a tool named Dual-Synthetic Environment (DSE) has been developed, which allows system integration and testing for both software and hardware elements, under representative environmental conditions e.g. gravity, illumination, etc. The final step, currently under development, consists on migrating the algorithms to a compact hardware platform, including sensors, to be integrated in the UAV payload and tested on flight.