Evaluating geometric primitives for crater-based pose estimation
Date
2026
Authors
McLeod, S.
Chng, C.-K.
Chin, T.-J.
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Advisors
Journal Title
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Journal article
Citation
Acta Astronautica, 2026; 238(A):1311-1325
Statement of Responsibility
Sofia McLeod, Chee-Kheng Chng, Tat-Jun Chin
Conference Name
Abstract
Crater-based pose estimation (CBPE) is an integral component of crater-based navigation (CBN) pipelines for cislunar, asteroid and planetary missions. CBPE aims to estimate the position and attitude of a spacecraft using observed craters and their correspondences in a catalogue of known craters. There are typically two paradigms in CBPE: point-based and ellipse-based methods. To the best of our knowledge, there has never been a comprehensive evaluation of these two geometric primitives for CBPE. While a recent study suggests ellipse-based methods are superior, we argue that the study is inconclusive due to the research gaps in pointbased methods. Existing point-based methods make one of two strong assumptions, i.e., the camera has to be nadir-pointing, or, the observed terrain has to be smooth. However, these assumptions do not hold in general CBN scenarios. To this end, we propose a new point-based method, dual perspective-n-point (PnP), that generalises to these scenarios. We demonstrate dual PnP’s strengths over existing point-based methods in two newly collected datasets. Furthermore, our findings provide strong evidence indicating the superiority of using ellipse-based geometric primitives over point-based geometric primitives for CBPE. This paper evaluates the two geometric primitives for CBPE, contributing to one of the most comprehensive analyses of CBPE methods to date.
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Dissertation Note
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Available online 16 April 2025
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© 2025 IAA. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights are reserved, including those for text and data mining, AI training, and similar technologies.