Giuseppe Denina Rivera
Development of an Affordable Rendezvous and Docking (RVD) Testing Framework for Reinforcement Learning-Based Navigation Algorithms.
Rel. Marcello Chiaberge, Carlo Cena. Politecnico di Torino, Master of science program in Mechatronic Engineering, 2026
Abstract
This thesis presents the design and experimental evaluation of an on-ground, low-cost docking simulation facility for testing Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) rendezvous and docking algorithms able to control small Cubesats. The facility is based on a repurposed 3D-printer, mechanically and electronically modified to execute pre-recorded trajectories generated by a numerical simulator in the loop with a DRL algorithm, scaled and fitted within the machine workspace. A dedicated embedded vision system acquires video of the entire execution for post-processing and comparison with the reference trajectories visualized in a SW Rendering engine. The motion system is driven by a Raspberry Pi 3B+ running Klipper firmware, while the vision system makes use of a Raspberry Pi 5 equipped with a Raspberry Pi Camera Module 3 Wide for visual data acquisition and processing.
The facility is commanded externally from a user machine while the networking between different components is handled by the Raspberry Pi 3B+, which provides a Wi-Fi network for user connectivity and a private wired link for Pi-to-Pi communication
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