# EBS-EKF: Accurate and High Frequency Event-based Star Tracking

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.20101 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.20101/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 8 of its 40 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 25 Mar 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 8 of 8)

- [Event-based Vision: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.08405/) (2019)
- [Continuous-time Intensity Estimation Using Event Cameras](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1811.00386/) (2018)
- [Seeing Motion at Nighttime with an Event Camera](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.11884/) (2024)
- [Star Tracking using an Event Camera](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.02895/) (2018)
- [Shining light on the DVS pixel: A tutorial and discussion about biasing and optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.04706/) (2023)
- [EV-Catcher: High-Speed Object Catching Using Low-latency Event-based Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.07200/) (2023)
- [Event-based Star Tracking via Multiresolution Progressive Hough Transforms](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.07866/) (2019)
- [A Primer on the Differential Calculus of 3D Orientations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1606.05285/) (2016)

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [Quantifying Accuracy of an Event-Based Star Tracker via Earth's Rotation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.08794/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Event-based sensors (EBS) are a promising new technology for star tracking due to their low latency and power efficiency, but prior work has thus far been evaluated exclusively in simulation with simplified signal models. We propose a novel algorithm for event-based star tracking, grounded in an analysis of the EBS circuit and an extended Kalman filter (EKF). We quantitatively evaluate our method using real night sky data, comparing its results with those from a space-ready active-pixel sensor (APS) star tracker. We demonstrate that our method is an order-of-magnitude more accurate than existing methods due to improved signal modeling and state estimation, while providing more frequent updates and greater motion tolerance than conventional APS trackers. We provide all code and the first dataset of events synchronized with APS solutions.