mlsanityData to 14 Oct 2026

Real-Time, Flight-Ready, Non-Cooperative Spacecraft Pose Estimation Using Monocular Imagery

arXiv 2101.09553 ↗First posted 23 Jan 2021cs.CV cs.LG cs.ROcited by 15

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Abstract (arXiv)

A key requirement for autonomous on-orbit proximity operations is the estimation of a target spacecraft's relative pose (position and orientation). It is desirable to employ monocular cameras for this problem due to their low cost, weight, and power requirements. This work presents a novel convolutional neural network (CNN)-based monocular pose estimation system that achieves state-of-the-art accuracy with low computational demand. In combination with a Blender-based synthetic data generation scheme, the system demonstrates the ability to generalize from purely synthetic training data to real in-space imagery of the Northrop Grumman Enhanced Cygnus spacecraft. Additionally, the system achieves real-time performance on low-power flight-like hardware.

Key facts. Cited by 15 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Builds on 13 of its 37 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 23 Jan 2021.

Builds on

13 of 37 references.

References · 13

  1. 2014Microsoft COCO: Common Objects in Contextcited by 17,608
  2. 2018MobileNetV2: Inverted Residuals and Linear Bottleneckscited by 4,795
  3. 2017SSD-6D: Making RGB-based 3D detection and 6D pose estimation great againcited by 243
  4. 2016Speed/accuracy trade-offs for modern convolutional object detectorscited by 198
  5. 2015Render for CNN: Viewpoint Estimation in Images Using CNNs Trained with Rendered 3D Model Viewscited by 94
  6. 2019Satellite Pose Estimation Challenge: Dataset, Competition Design and Resultscited by 62
  7. 2019Satellite Pose Estimation with Deep Landmark Regression and Nonlinear Pose Refinementcited by 56
  8. 2019Deep Learning for Spacecraft Pose Estimation from Photorealistic Renderingcited by 54
  9. 2018Pose Estimation for Non-Cooperative Spacecraft Rendezvous Using Convolutional Neural Networkscited by 34
  10. 2019Towards Robust Learning-Based Pose Estimation of Noncooperative Spacecraftcited by 27
  11. 2020MobilePose: Real-Time Pose Estimation for Unseen Objects with Weak Shape Supervisioncited by 16
  12. 2019CullNet: Calibrated and Pose Aware Confidence Scores for Object Pose Estimationcited by 9
1 more
  1. 2020DeepURL: Deep Pose Estimation Framework for Underwater Relative Localizationcited by 9

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Cited by year

Citing papers per year: 2021: 3; 2022: 3; 2023: 2; 2024: 3; 2025: 4.

15 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. 2023A Survey on Deep Learning-Based Monocular Spacecraft Pose Estimation: Current State, Limitations and Prospectscited by 30
  4. 2021Vision-based Neural Scene Representations for Spacecraftcited by 12
  5. 2021LSPnet: A 2D Localization-oriented Spacecraft Pose Estimation Neural Networkcited by 10
  6. 20236D Object Pose Estimation from Approximate 3D Models for Orbital Roboticscited by 10
  7. 2022Mobile-URSONet: an Embeddable Neural Network for Onboard Spacecraft Pose Estimationcited by 5
  8. 2022Deep Learning for Real Time Satellite Pose Estimation on Low Power Edge TPUcited by 4
  9. 2024Domain Generalization for In-Orbit 6D Pose Estimationcited by 3
  10. 2025Spiking monocular event based 6D pose estimation for space applicationcited by 3
  11. 2024Real-Time Spacecraft Pose Estimation Using Mixed-Precision Quantized Neural Network on COTS Reconfigurable MPSoCcited by 2
  12. 2025Motion Aware ViT-based Framework for Monocular 6-DoF Spacecraft Pose Estimationcited by 2
3 more
  1. 2024SpY: A Context-Based Approach to Spacecraft Component Detectioncited by 0
  2. 2025Deep Learning-Based Image Recovery and Pose Estimation for Resident Space Objectscited by 0
  3. 2025Enabling Robust, Real-Time Verification of Vision-Based Navigation through View Synthesiscited by 0