Non-Contact Measurement and Identification Method of Large Flexible Space Structures in Low Characteristic Scenes

Sensors (Basel). 2023 Feb 7;23(4):1878. doi: 10.3390/s23041878.

Abstract

The end-operation accuracy of the satellite-borne robotic arm is closely related to the satellite attitude control accuracy, and the influence of the vibration of the satellite's flexural structure on the satellite attitude control is not negligible. Therefore, a stable and reliable vibration frequency identification method of the satellite flexural structure is needed. Different from the traditional non-contact measurement and identification methods of large flexible space structures based on marker points or edge corner points, the condition of non-marker points relying on texture features can identify more feature points, but there are problems such as low recognition and poor matching of features. Given this, the concept of 'the comprehensive matching parameter' of scenes is proposed to describe the scene characteristics of non-contact optical measurement from the two dimensions of recognition and matching. The basic connotation and evaluation index of the concept are also given in the paper. Guided by this theory, the recognition accuracy and matching uniqueness of features can be improved by means of equivalent spatial transformation and novel relative position relationship descriptor. The above problems in non-contact measurement technology can be solved only through algorithm improvement without adding hardware devices. On this basis, the Eigensystem Realization Algorithm (ERA) method is used to obtain the modal parameters of the large flexible space structure. Finally, the effectiveness and superiority of the proposed method are verified by mathematical simulation and ground testing.

Keywords: feature point matching; large flexible space structures; low characteristic scenes; modal parameter identification; non-contact measurement.