This paper describes the multilayer voting algorithm, a novel autonomous star identification method for spacecraft attitude determination. The proposed algorithm includes two processes: an initial match process and a verification process. In the initial match process, a triangle voting scheme is used to acquire candidates of the detected stars, in which the triangle unit is adopted as the basic voting unit. During the identification process, feature extraction is implemented, and each triangle unit is described by its singular values. Then the singular values are used to search for candidates of the imaged triangle units, which further improve the efficiency and robustness of the algorithm. After the initial match step, a verification method is applied to eliminate incorrect candidates from the initial results and then outputting the final match results of the imaged stars. Experiments show that our algorithm has more robustness to position noise, magnitude noise, and false stars than the other three algorithms, the identification speed of our algorithm is largely faster than the geometric voting algorithm and optimized grid algorithm. However, it takes more memory, and SVD also seems faster.
Keywords: singular values feature; star identification; star sensor; triangle unit voting.