Patent ID: 8472737

Claim:
A method for estimating an attitude of an object, the method comprising: (a) receiving, from an image source, a first series of starfield images; (b) upon determining that the first series of starfield images is of sufficient quality for compressive sampling, requesting that the image source send starfield images of lesser quality; (c) receiving, from the image source, a second series of starfield images; (d) upon determining that the second series of starfield images is of insufficient quality for compressive sampling, requesting that the image source send starfield images of greater quality; (e) determining, in a compressed domain, the positions of a plurality of stars in a compressed sample representing a starfield view as seen from an object; (f) identifying, in the compressed domain, each of the plurality of stars based at least in part on their determined positions; (g) updating at least one of the determined positions based on one or more of the identified stars; (h) repeating steps (e)-(g) until a pattern comprising at least three identified stars has been recognized; and (i) estimating, in the compressed domain, an attitude of the object based at least in part on the pattern of identified stars.