Patent ID: 11945609
Assignee: FALCON EXODYNAMICS, INC.
Field: Computer technology (Electrical engineering)
Classification: CPC B  G | IPC B  G

Claim 7:
8. An apparatus for controlling docking with a spacecraft, comprising:
at least one camera for generating at least one image pixel stream of the spacecraft;
a field programmable gate array (FPGA) for receiving the at least one image pixel stream from the at least one camera, the FPGA texture processing the at least one image pixel stream to generate at least one texture map for the at least one image pixel stream;
a processor for receiving the at least one texture map from the FPGA, the processor further configured to:
generate thresholding results for each of the at least one pixel image stream responsive to the generated at least one texture map;
fuses each of the thresholding results for the at least one pixel image stream to create fused thresholding results;
determine a bus centroid of the spacecraft responsive to the generated fused thresholding results;
output the determined bus centroid of the spacecraft; and

a docking controller for controlling docking with the spacecraft responsive to the determined bus centroid of the spacecraft.