Dots-array photogrammetry of flexible antenna surfaces

The paper proposes a method of using dots in an array as targets for photogrammetry to reconstruct the surface of a large-size flexible antenna efficiently. An analysis demonstrates the impacts of the spot size and the regional feature on the point extraction accuracy, and introduces a fitting-ellipse algorithm in this paper that eliminates the deformation and the shielding. In the feature extraction and matching processes, this article puts forward a feature identification technique based on the area and a matching algorithm depending on the order constraint. The paper closes with an experiment that shows the equipment that can measure a gossamer area of 1m×1.2m in time of less than 1s, which shows its advantages of high accuracy and high efficiency in detecting the shape of a large field.