Autonomous Orbit Determination in Cislunar Space

Autonomous orbit determination could help reducing the growing load on ground-based deep space networks. For small satellites, orbit determination based solely on inter-satellite measurements could be a strong alternative for conventional ground-based navigation support. The possibilities of this autonomous orbit determination method are...

Autonomous control for miniaturized mobile robots in unknown pipe networks

Despite recent advances in robotic technology, sewer pipe inspection is still limited to conventional approaches that use cable-tethered robots. Such commercially available tethered robots lack autonomy, and their operation must be manually controlled via their tethered cables. Consequently, they can only travel to a certain distance in pipe,...

Autonomous Nevigation of Nano-satellites during Earth-Moon Transfer

Autonomous Relative Navigation for Small Spacecraft

The thesis deals with the relative navigation between two small formation flying spacecraft. The inter-satellite distance is measured using locally generated radiofrequency ranging signals. Design considerations for the spacecraft and the relative navigation system are discussed as well as the estimation of the relative state. The influence of...