A passive sensor for position and attitude estimation using an interferometric target

In this paper, we describe a new sensor technology aimed at better identifying the relative motion of two vehicles (eg the motion of a car from another car, or that of a ship from an helicopter etc.) or in general two objects of large or small sizes. The system described in this paper consists of an optical setup aimed at generating interference fringes made visible to one vehicle by the other vehicle (or, in general, to one object by the other object). The setup consists, on the one hand, of a flat target that generates interference fringes by using superimposed gratings; on the other hand, it includes an image acquisition system, such as a digital camera. There is a very widely documented use of gratings and moire effects to obtain relevant information about object shape and position.