Photonic Mixer Devices provide an image containing information about object reflectivity and distance, for each single pixel. They operate by emitting modulated infrared light and correlating the reflected light with a reference signal. The measured phase-shift holds the relative distance between the sensor and the object seen in the image. Image features can be seen as densely packed information about local image properties. The design of these features aims to provide a stable basis for recognizing distinguished characteristic points of object surfaces, regardless of lighting conditions and orientation of the object. This paper investigates the feasibility of PMD sensors in the field of spacecraft pose determination and motion detection. Image features- optimized for this particular sensor type- are used for determining the pose of an a priori known object. The features of the known object are stored in memory, while features extracted from the camera image are matched against the stored features. By minimizing the squared distance between matched features, the pose estimate is obtained.
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