High-accuracy Vision-Based Attitude Estimation System for Air-Bearing
  Spacecraft Simulators
Fabio Ornati Gianfranco Di Domenico Paolo Panicucci Francesco Topputo
Air-bearing platforms for simulating the rotational dynamics of satellites
require highly precise ground truth systems. Unfortunately, commercial motion
capture systems used for this scope are complex and expensive. This paper shows
a novel and versatile method to compute the attitude of rotational air-bearing
platforms using a monocular camera and sets of fiducial markers. The work
proposes a geometry-based iterative algorithm that is significantly more
accurate than other literature methods that involve the solution of the
Perspective-n-Point problem. Additionally, auto-calibration procedures to
perform a preliminary estimation of the system parameters are shown. The
developed methodology is deployed onto a Raspberry Pi 4 micro-computer and
tested with a set of LED markers. Data obtained with this setup are compared
against computer simulations of the same system to understand and validate the
attitude estimation performances. Simulation results show expected 1-sigma
accuracies in the order of $\sim$ 12 arcsec and $\sim$ 37 arcsec for about- and
cross-boresight rotations of the platform, and average latency times of 6 ms.