Accurate 3D geometry measurement for non-cooperative spacecraft with an unfocused light-field camera

This work explores an alternative 3D geometry measurement method for non-cooperative spacecraft guiding navigation and proximity operations.From one snapshot of an unfocused light-field camera, the 3D point cloud of a non-cooperative spacecraft can be calculated from sub-aperture images with the epipolar plane image(EPI) based light-field rendering algorithm.A Chang’e-3 model(7.2 cm×5.6 cm×7.0 cm) is tested to validate the proposed technique.Three measurement distances(1.0 m, 1.2 m, 1.5 m) are considered to simulate different approaching stages.Measuring errors are quantified by comparing the light-field camera data with a high precision commercial laser scanner.The mean error distance for the three cases are 0.837 mm, 0.743 mm, and 0.973 mm respectively, indicating that the method can well reconstruct 3D geometry of a non-cooperative spacecraft with a densely distributed 3D point cloud and is thus promising in space-related missions.