Precision potential of photogrammetric 6DOF pose estimation with a single camera

The article discusses the theoretical precision for the measurement of six degrees of freedom (6DOF = position and orientation in 3D space) of an object with respect to a reference system using one camera only. Single camera solutions are of interest in applications where the application is restricted to only one camera, e.g. due restrictions in terms of costs, synchronisation demands, or spatial observation conditions. A pure photogrammetric approach is discussed in which two sequential space resections generate the required six transformation values. The paper describes the mathematical model and precision evaluations based on mathematical simulations, and some practical examples as well. With suitable configurations of camera position, object size and reference system, accuracies of better than 1:10 000 of the measuring volume can be achieved whereby translations in Z and rotations around ω and φ are the most critical to measure.