A Simulation Facility for Vision-Based Planetary Landing Systems

This paper presents the project and setup activities of a new test facility for autonomous optical navigation systems for planetary landing maneuvers, at the Aerospace Science and Technology Department of Politecnico di Milano (PoliMi-DAER), with the objective to rise the low TRL of such a technology. The facility setup includes a 2.4 meters wide scaled 3D model of the lunar surface, with the role to simulate the terrain geometry; a 7DoF Mitsubishi PA-10 robot arm, designed to carry the navigation sensors suite and simulating the lander dynamics; a lighting system and a dimming system, in order to exclude external light and provide a fully controllable illumination environment. The sensor assembly is mounted on the end effector of the robot, that can be moved over simulated lunar terrain, with realistic lighting conditions, in order to simulate lunar landing maneuvers in a scaled environment. The facility is suitable to provide a relevant environment, with slight modifications, also for the case of Mars, Asteroids and other moons of the Solar System. The design and trade-off activities for the new facility are here presented; the facility setup, and the test plan scheduled for functional verification and first testing are explained in detail.