Star-Tracker Algorithm for Smartphones and Commercial Micro-Drones

This paper presents a star-tracking algorithm to determine the accurate global orientation of autonomous platforms such as nano satellites, $UAV$ s, and micro-drones using commercial-off-the-shelf ( $COTS$ ) mobile devices such as smartphones. Such star-tracking is especially challenging because it is based on existing cameras which capture a partial view of the sky and should work continuously and autonomously. The novelty of the proposed framework lies both in the computational efficiency and the ability of the star-tracker algorithm to cope with noisy measurements and outliers using affordable $COTS$ mobile platforms. The presented algorithm was implemented and tested on several popular platforms including: Android mobile devices, commercial-micro drones, and Raspberry Pi. The expected accuracy of the reported orientation is [0.1°,0.5°].