Accuracy of Relative Navigation Using Time-of-Flight Cameras

Three-dimensional time-of-flight cameras are being used increasingly widely, and they have found applications in robotics for information support of motion control tasks. They are also considered promising for spacecraft control at short distances from other spacecraft. One such application is relative navigation in the problem of docking with a non-cooperative spacecraft. In this case, the values of the relative coordinates’ measurement errors that the time-of-flight camera can provide are very important. This paper proposes a method for estimating the magnitude of errors in measuring relative coordinates, which depend on the shape of the passive spacecraft, and the distance, observation angle, and parameters of the time-of-flight camera. The lower Cramer–Rao bound is used as an estimate.