Attitude-motion estimation of tumbling objects using, radio frequency identification

Radio frequency identification (RFID) technology is introduced to present a new concept for attitude-motion estimation and demonstrate the basic performance of the estimation method. A visible aspect depends on the communication between the RFID tag and each RFID reader. The target is a cubic object that is a tumbling satellite rotating at a speed of 1 rpm and with an edge length of 0.5 m and has the size of a microsatellite. The results indicate the presence of a configuration in which readers can efficiently reduce the indeterminacy and that one spacecraft equipped with three RFID readers is sufficient for observation in the given system. The simulations demonstrate the robustness of false-negative errors such as occlusion of RFID tags, which is found to be due to the dorm of the likelihood function.