Method of a Planetary Rover Localization Based on Synthetic Lunokhod Images

Abstract

We present a method which is a continuation of work-in-progress paper (Kozlova et al., 2014). LRO NAC DEM, orthomosaic, and the results of detailed studies of the Lunokhod-2 route were used for modeling of individual sites in order to find observation points for archival panoramas. The method suggests determination of rover coordinates from photogrammetry processing of obtained surface images together with artificially modeled synthetic images produced from high-resolution DEM and orthomosaic. We have now tested the method on models and on real Lunokhod-2 data. The method proved its effectiveness on models, however, for Lunokhod-2 panoramas further research is needed to calibrate the camera properly.