Engineering topics
Publications and source records attributed to Richardson, T. E..
Circuit provides data for computer to calculate coordinates of bright spot of light in video image. Calculation performed while image being scanned, and results available immediately at end of video frame. Video-processing circuit has variety of potential uses in commerce and industry. For example, locates tagged-parts on factory assembly line or track airplane landing lights.
The critical elements of an autonomous video rendezvous and docking system were built and used successfully in a physical laboratory simulation. The laboratory system demonstrated that a small, inexpensive electronic package and a flight computer of modest size can analyze television images to derive guidance information for spacecraft. In the ultimate application, the system would use a docking aid consisting of three flashing lights mounted on a passive target spacecraft. Television imagery of the docking aid would be processed aboard an active chase vehicle to derive relative positions and attitudes of the two spacecraft. The demonstration system used scale models of the target spacecraft with working docking aids. A television camera mounted on a 6 degree of freedom (DOF) simulator provided imagery of the target to simulate observations from the chase vehicle. A hardware video processor extracted statistics from the imagery, from which a computer quickly computed position and attitude. Computer software known as a Kalman filter derived velocity information from position measurements.