TelePIX tested in orbit a technology that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to directly find the real-world location of satellite imagery from within the satellite.
TelePIX said on the 3rd that it successfully demonstrated in orbit by loading its self-developed AI-based satellite image geometric correction and geolocation model onto the microsatellite BlueBON.
Geometric correction is the process of correcting location and shape errors contained in satellite imagery to align them with actual map coordinates. Normally, after transmitting captured data to a ground station, it goes through separate computational processing and verification, but in this test, AI onboard the satellite directly estimated the image's location immediately after capture and aligned it with a reference image.
The demonstration used the roughly 15-kilogram BlueBON and the TetraPLEX, a graphics processing unit (GPU)-based onboard AI computer. On Aug. 21, in the first test targeting the area around Apple Park in California, the United States, the image was divided into 12 sections and all were successfully matched with the reference image. In the second test on the 24th in the Hortobágy region of Hungary, the locations of 36 sections were matched.
The location residuals measured in the two tests were 11.4 meters and 9.7 meters, respectively. The AI processing time per section was about 0.5 seconds. In the second test, the actual shooting point deviated about 21.9 kilometers from the originally planned location, but the shooting location was found within the preset wide-area search range.
TelePIX said it used lightweight reference data for the AI model instead of preloading large-scale terrain databases onto the satellite. It noted that software and AI models can be updated even after launch, enabling responses to changes in missions or operating regions.
If image geolocation correction and analysis become possible inside the satellite, the burden of transmitting all raw data to the ground can be reduced. In particular, it could be used to shorten processing times in areas that require rapid use of imagery, such as disasters and emergencies or defense and security.
The company said this is the world's first case of automatically performing the entire AI-based geometric correction process in a real satellite's onboard AI environment and verifying it in orbit.
TelePIX plans to expand the scope of onboard AI applications to object and change detection and image analysis. It is aiming for an in-orbit test in 2027 of a vision-language model (VLM) that analyzes images inside the satellite and even generates reports.