Stanford Engineers Teach Spacecraft to "Dream" Their Way to the Space Station

What happened

They also take advantage of another mathematical trick called an Extended Kalman Filter, which helps them take in data from GPS receivers and star trackers, and output thruster burn duty cycles. However, actually doing so is a showcase in how difficult orbital mechanics can be.

It’s equivalent to traveling down a highway at 28,000 km/hr and parallel parking into an open garage on a multi-billion dollar laboratory traveling at the same speed. For decades, aerospace engineers have been docking successfully using hard coded physics equations and human pilots to correct them.

Traditionally, navigation computers use a type of algorithm called a Guidance, Navigation and Control (GNC) algorithm. Unfortunately, Kalman filters are terrible at processing high-speed video.

So engineers turn to traditional computer vision techniques. However, they themselves face a huge hurdle in space - they’re very fragile.