mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

Deep Learning for Spacecraft Pose Estimation from Photorealistic Rendering

arXiv 1907.04298 ↗First posted 9 Jul 2019cs.CV cs.LG cs.ROcited by 54

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Abstract (arXiv)

On-orbit proximity operations in space rendezvous, docking and debris removal require precise and robust 6D pose estimation under a wide range of lighting conditions and against highly textured background, i.e., the Earth. This paper investigates leveraging deep learning and photorealistic rendering for monocular pose estimation of known uncooperative spacecrafts. We first present a simulator built on Unreal Engine 4, named URSO, to generate labeled images of spacecrafts orbiting the Earth, which can be used to train and evaluate neural networks. Secondly, we propose a deep learning framework for pose estimation based on orientation soft classification, which allows modelling orientation ambiguity as a mixture of Gaussians. This framework was evaluated both on URSO datasets and the ESA pose estimation challenge. In this competition, our best model achieved 3rd place on the synthetic test set and 2nd place on the real test set. Moreover, our results show the impact of several architectural and training aspects, and we demonstrate qualitatively how models learned on URSO datasets can perform on real images from space.

Key facts. Cited by 54 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). First posted on arXiv 9 Jul 2019.

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Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2021: 10; 2022: 8; 2023: 12; 2024: 10; 2025: 8; 2026: 6.

54 papers.

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  1. 2021SPEED+: Next-Generation Dataset for Spacecraft Pose Estimation across Domain Gapcited by 57
  2. 2022Robust Multi-Task Learning and Online Refinement for Spacecraft Pose Estimation across Domain Gapcited by 44
  3. 2024Deep Learning-Based Object Pose Estimation: A Comprehensive Surveycited by 39
  4. 2023A Survey on Deep Learning-Based Monocular Spacecraft Pose Estimation: Current State, Limitations and Prospectscited by 30
  5. 2021A Spacecraft Dataset for Detection, Segmentation and Parts Recognitioncited by 22
  6. 2022Towards Bridging the Space Domain Gap for Satellite Pose Estimation using Event Sensingcited by 21
  7. 2021Deep Learning-based Spacecraft Relative Navigation Methods: A Surveycited by 17
  8. 2021Real-Time, Flight-Ready, Non-Cooperative Spacecraft Pose Estimation Using Monocular Imagerycited by 15
  9. 2022CA-SpaceNet: Counterfactual Analysis for 6D Pose Estimation in Spacecited by 13
  10. 2023SPADES: A Realistic Spacecraft Pose Estimation Dataset using Event Sensingcited by 13
  11. 2022Spacecraft Pose Estimation Based on Unsupervised Domain Adaptation and on a 3D-Guided Loss Combinationcited by 12
  12. 2021ChiNet: Deep Recurrent Convolutional Learning for Multimodal Spacecraft Pose Estimationcited by 11
38 more
  1. 2021LSPnet: A 2D Localization-oriented Spacecraft Pose Estimation Neural Networkcited by 10
  2. 20236D Object Pose Estimation from Approximate 3D Models for Orbital Roboticscited by 10
  3. 2023Learning to Predict 3D Rotational Dynamics from Images of a Rigid Body with Unknown Mass Distributioncited by 7
  4. 2024Leveraging Neural Radiance Fields for Pose Estimation of an Unknown Space Object during Proximity Operationscited by 7
  5. 2021SPARK: SPAcecraft Recognition leveraging Knowledge of Space Environmentcited by 6
  6. 2024Bridging the Domain Gap for Flight-Ready Spaceborne Visioncited by 6
  7. 2022Mobile-URSONet: an Embeddable Neural Network for Onboard Spacecraft Pose Estimationcited by 5
  8. 2023Recent Advancements in Deep Learning Applications and Methods for Autonomous Navigation: A Comprehensive Reviewcited by 5
  9. 2024Domain Generalization for 6D Pose Estimation Through NeRF-based Image Synthesiscited by 5
  10. 2025Fast Learning of Non-Cooperative Spacecraft 3D Models through Primitive Initializationcited by 5
  11. 2022Deep Learning for Real Time Satellite Pose Estimation on Low Power Edge TPUcited by 4
  12. 2025FastPose-ViT: A Vision Transformer for Real-Time Spacecraft Pose Estimationcited by 4
  13. 2021Using Convolutional Neural Networks for Relative Pose Estimation of a Non-Cooperative Spacecraft with Thermal Infrared Imagerycited by 3
  14. 2022Lessons from a Space Lab -- An Image Acquisition Perspectivecited by 3
  15. 2024Domain Generalization for In-Orbit 6D Pose Estimationcited by 3
  16. 2024Test-Time Certifiable Self-Supervision to Bridge the Sim2Real Gap in Event-Based Satellite Pose Estimationcited by 3
  17. 2021A Pipeline for Vision-Based On-Orbit Proximity Operations Using Deep Learning and Synthetic Imagerycited by 2
  18. 2021MBAPose: Mask and Bounding-Box Aware Pose Estimation of Surgical Instruments with Photorealistic Domain Randomizationcited by 2
  19. 2023SU-Net: Pose estimation network for non-cooperative spacecraft on-orbitcited by 2
  20. 20233D-Aware Object Localization using Gaussian Implicit Occupancy Functioncited by 2
  21. 2024Real-Time Spacecraft Pose Estimation Using Mixed-Precision Quantized Neural Network on COTS Reconfigurable MPSoCcited by 2
  22. 2025Motion Aware ViT-based Framework for Monocular 6-DoF Spacecraft Pose Estimationcited by 2
  23. 2025NeRF-based Visualization of 3D Cues Supporting Data-Driven Spacecraft Pose Estimationcited by 2
  24. 2025Improved 3D Gaussian Splatting of Unknown Spacecraft Structure Using Space Environment Illumination Knowledgecited by 2
  25. 2026SpaceSense-Bench: A Large-Scale Multi-Modal Benchmark for Spacecraft Perception and Pose Estimationcited by 2
  26. 2023A ground-based dataset and a diffusion model for on-orbit low-light image enhancementcited by 1
  27. 2024Computer vision tasks for intelligent aerospace missions: An overviewcited by 1
  28. 2024Test-Time Adaptation for Keypoint-Based Spacecraft Pose Estimation Based on Predicted-View Synthesiscited by 1
  29. 2025Hardware-aware vs. Hardware-agnostic Energy Estimation for SNN in Space Applicationscited by 1
  30. 2026Component-Aware Structure-Preserving Style Transfer for Satellite Visual Sim2Real Data Constructioncited by 1
  31. 2026Segmentation-based Detection for Efficient Multi-Task Spacecraft Perceptioncited by 1
  32. 2022Hardware-accelerated Mars Sample Localization via deep transfer learning from photorealistic simulationscited by 0
  33. 2023Modular Quantization-Aware Training for 6D Object Pose Estimationcited by 0
  34. 2023Orbital AI-based Autonomous Refuelling Solutioncited by 0
  35. 2023LROC-PANGU-GAN: Closing the Simulation Gap in Learning Crater Segmentation with Planetary Simulatorscited by 0
  36. 2023Robust Adversarial Attacks Detection for Deep Learning based Relative Pose Estimation for Space Rendezvouscited by 0
  37. 2024Accelerating AI and Computer Vision for Satellite Pose Estimation on the Intel Myriad X Embedded SoCcited by 0
  38. 2025A large-scale, physically-based synthetic dataset for satellite pose estimationcited by 0

50 most cited of 54 All 54 (JSON)