Persistence-Weighted Performance Metric for PID Gain Optimization in Optical Tracking of Unknown Space Objects.

Area of Science:

• Space Surveillance and Tracking
• Optical Systems Engineering
• Control Systems Theory

Background:

• Accurate optical tracking of unknown space objects is crucial for identification using narrow field-of-view sensors.
• Existing performance metrics like RMS error and persistence time (PT) offer incomplete assessments for controller tuning.
• Successful optical identification demands both high spatial accuracy and temporal stability in tracking.

Purpose of the Study:

• To introduce a novel composite metric, the Persistence-Weighted Tracking Index (PWTI), for evaluating optical tracking performance.
• To integrate spatial precision and segment-level continuity into a single, comprehensive performance measure.
• To optimize controller parameters using PWTI for enhanced tracking of uncataloged targets.

Main Methods:

• Developed the Persistence-Weighted Tracking Index (PWTI) by combining positional error and segment continuity.
• Utilized a genetic algorithm (GA) to tune Proportional-Integral-Derivative (PID) controller gains with PWTI as the optimization objective.
• Conducted comparative simulations across diverse observation scenarios to assess tuning method effectiveness.

Main Results:

• PWTI-based controller tuning demonstrated superior performance compared to RMS error and PT-based methods.
• The proposed metric resulted in improved alignment accuracy and tracking consistency.
• Simulations confirmed the effectiveness of PWTI in scenarios involving unknown or uncataloged space objects.

Conclusions:

• The Persistence-Weighted Tracking Index (PWTI) is a more suitable performance metric for optical identification tasks.
• PWTI effectively balances spatial precision and temporal continuity for robust space object tracking.
• This approach enhances the ability to identify and characterize unknown targets in space.