Real-Time Docking Ring Detection Based on the Geometrical Shape for an On-Orbit Spacecraft

Docking ring is a circular hatch of spacecraft that allows servicing spacecraft to dock in various space missions. The detection of the ring is greatly beneficial to automatic capture, rendezvous and docking. Based on its geometrical shape, we propose a real-time docking ring detection method for on-orbit spacecraft. Firstly, we extract arcs from the edge mask and classify them into four classes according to edge direction and convexity. By developing the arc selection strategy, we select a combination of arcs possibly belonging to the same ellipse, and then estimate its parameters via the least squares fitting technique. Candidate ellipses are validated according to the fitness of the estimation with the actual edge pixels. The experiments show that our method is superior to the state-of-the-art methods, and can be used in real time application. The method can also be extended to other applications.