Development of a Low-SWaP, Modular, and Standalone Visual Relative Navigation System

Low-cost systems capable of performing onboard processing for navigation in the space domain will be a key component of a new wave of missions that are smaller in scale (and budget) than previous flagship-level efforts. Astrobotic’s UltraNav (Ultra-Compact Standalone Visual Relative Navigation) system is a “bolt-on”, low size, weight, and power system that leverages a modular software design and reconfigurable hardware to fit the needs of multiple space applications and maximize reusability. In this work, we investigate a representative use case for UltraNav as a terrain relative navigation (TRN) sensor, providing an overview of the image processing pipeline and associated algorithms, experimental results from sample descent and landing datasets, as well as a description of hardware-in-the-loop testing activities conducted at NASA Johnson Space Center’s Six-degree-of-freedom Tendon-Actuated Robot (STAR) facility.