"I3DS project aimed at designing and developing an inspector sensors suite with integrated pre-processing and data concentration functions.
The sensor items in I3DS are:
• The star tracker that finds the orientation and location of the vessel using the stars.
• The time of flight (TOF) camera that captures depth images to generate 3D point clouds.
• The stereo camera that delivers two synchronized image streams that can be processed into a disparity map and 3D point clouds.
• The high-resolution camera that delivers a monochrome image stream.
• The thermal infra-red (TIR) camera that delivers thermal image stream.
• The force/torque sensors and contact/tactile sensors that delivers the contact information with the target used in the final docking phase of a rendezvous.
• The light detection and ranging (LIDAR) that delivers distance measurements to be used to generate 3D point clouds.
• The radar that is used for ranging measurements.
• The inertial measurement unit (IMU) that keeps track of the systems rotational and spatial acceleration, and feeds data into a Kalman filter to keep track of the systems state.
For illumination items the projected pattern illumination can be used with the high-resolution camera and a pre-processing algorithm to create 3D point clouds. The wide-angle torch provides general illumination when needed for both the high-resolution and stereo cameras.
The ICU contains the networking equipment for connecting devices and high-performance MPSoC and FPGA for control of the devices, processing of data streams and interfacing with the OBC.
The software components of the system are pre-processing of imaging streams, the sensor interfaces for controlling and accessing the sensors, the system interface for receiving commands and sending data to the OBC, and the real-time operating system.
One of I3DS main function is to produce pre-processed sensor data to the system in order to improve and facilitate the system sensor data processing.
The pre-processing goal was to transform the raw sensor data into a form that is suitable for use in typical navigation data fusion algorithms. The following pre-processing algorithms are proposed in for I3DS sensors:
1. Lens vignetting correction
2. Optical distortion correction
3. Bilateral Filtering
4. Histogram equalisation
5. Stereo rectification
6. Structured light pattern detection
The I3DS sensors have been validated trough orbital and planetary tracks and here are the sensors performances obtained are summarised in the attached table.
The dissemination of I3DS has been done through several means:
1. Project Website:
http://i3ds-h2020.eu/(si apre in una nuova finestra) 2. Project web articles and social media on partners company website
•
https://www.thalesgroup.com/en/worldwide/space/news/sabrina-andiappane-engineer-thales-alenia-space-named-most-promising-newcomer-0(si apre in una nuova finestra) •
https://www.sintef.no/en/projects/i3ds/(si apre in una nuova finestra) •
http://piap.pl/badanie/i3ds/(si apre in una nuova finestra) •
https://www.hertzsystems.com/firma-hertz-systems-wygrala-konkurs-na-zintegrowanie-sensorow-3d/#(si apre in una nuova finestra) 3. Participation to several conference and company R&D events to promote I3DS
4. Press tours were done at TASF Cannes facilities where I3DS project was presented on the robotic test bench facility
5. Scientific paper publications at European conferences such as I-Sairas, IAC, DASIA, ADCSS and Ada Europe
6. I3DS communication tool kit with kakemono, posters, flyers and a video
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