Autonomous navigation method for soft landing on small body based on image sequence

This paper proposes an autonomous navigation method for soft landing on small body. The formulation for recursive estimation algorithm of relative pose and motion from feature points tracked through an image sequence is presented. Due to the nonlinear of measurement equation based on the projection model of image formation, the extended Kalman filter is employed. In addition to adding distance between probe and surface of small body to state vector, the 3-D position of feature point is also estimated. The results on synthetic image show that the proposed algorithm can provide the estimation of state with satisfactory accuracy.