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MER-DIMES : a planetary landing application of computer visionDuring the Mars Exploration Rovers (MER) landings, the Descent Image Motion Estimation System (DIMES) was used for horizontal velocity estimation. The DIMES algorithm combines measurements from a descent camera, a radar altimeter and an inertial measurement unit. To deal with large changes in scale and orientation between descent images, the algorithm uses altitude and attitude measurements to rectify image data to level ground plane. Feature selection and tracking is employed in the rectified data to compute the horizontal motion between images. Differences of motion estimates are then compared to inertial measurements to verify correct feature tracking. DIMES combines sensor data from multiple sources in a novel way to create a low-cost, robust and computationally efficient velocity estimation solution, and DIMES is the first use of computer vision to control a spacecraft during planetary landing. In this paper, the detailed implementation of the DIMES algorithm and the results from the two landings on Mars are presented.
Document ID
20060042645
Acquisition Source
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Document Type
Conference Paper
External Source(s)
Authors
Cheng, Yang
Johnson, Andrew
Matthies, Larry
Date Acquired
August 23, 2013
Publication Date
June 1, 2005
Meeting Information
Meeting: IEEE Computer Society International Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Location: San Diego, CA
Country: United States
Start Date: June 20, 2005
End Date: June 26, 2005
Distribution Limits
Public
Copyright
Other
Keywords
landing systems
computer vision

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