A New Method of Determining Relative Orientation in Photogrammetry with a Small Number of Coded Targets

In traditional close range photogrammetry, more than eight coded targets are adopted to determine the relative orientation. Generally, dozens or hundreds are needed for higher precision. It is a tedious task to place them in the scene. In this paper, a new method with less than eight coded targets is proposed. The key idea is the coded pattern not only provides identification information, but also contains substantial location information. A new detection method of coded targets is developed to recognize the coded targets and excavate the location information in the coded pattern. All this location information is adopted to determine the relative orientation. The experiment results show that two coded targets are enough to determine the relative orientation, and three are enough for high precision.