Speaker
Description
Verification and validation of optical navigation algorithms and sensors in TRON
Hans Krüger, GNC Systems department, DLR Institute of Space Systems, Bremen
The Testbed for robotic optical navigation (TRON) is a Hardware-in-the-Loop Test (HiLT) facility for optical navigation technology. For imaging-based sensors TRON provides an environment that allows developing and qualifying such sensor hardware up to a TRL of 7. Typical devices tested in TRON are active and passive optical sensors like lidars and cameras. A common task for TRON is also to provide sensor data for the verification and validation of the algorithmic part of a future sensor.
Major components of the lab are a robot on a rail for dynamic positioning of the candidate sensor, a set of models of lunar terrain as sensor targets, a dynamic lighting system for defined illumination, and laser metrology equipment for high precision ground truth.
This presentation provides an overview of TRON’s building blocks, and how they work together. Examples will be presented to illustrate how the building blocks can be combined for different scenarios, such as imaging during the lunar descent orbit and lunar landing, or flash lidar characterization using geometric primitives.
A detailed example will demonstrate a generic task found often in the field of verification and validation of optical sensors. It is taking images of a terrain model from pre-defined poses, and providing ground truth for each image. The definition of ground truth will be discussed, as well as the process of determining it.
A preview of the upcoming verification of DLR’s crater navigation algorithm will highlight TRON’s relevance to current space missions.
