Pose Determination Of A Satellite Grapple Fixture Using A Wrist-Mounted Laser Range Finder

Abstract

A laser range finder mounted on a robot wrist has been used to determine the position and orientation (pose) of a standard satellite grapple fixture. This sensor provides single profiles of range data. Non-adjacent parallel scanlines are acquired from a selected viewpoint, giving data which is sparse along the y-axis of the scanner, while being dense along the x-axis. An application-dependent algorithm for recognition of the grapple fixture components and its pose determination has been implemented. The method takes advantage of the sparse nature of the data, thereby requiring a minimal amount of processing.