Test set-up
For testing the large checkerboard targets, we have chose the following set-up:
The following measurement setup was selected for testing the small checkerboard targets:
Analysis & results
Detection of large targets by use of automatic target detection works great at a distance of 12.5 meters and with 1/8 resolution. There are no results for distances of 7.5 and 10 meters available - This depends on the size of the large target. Since the "large" target is significantly larger than the "small" one, more scanning points can be found on the large target. Thus, software can detect the large checkerboards even at higher distances and average resolutions (1/5 at 35m) without any problems. It can be supposed that the large targets are visible even at distances of about 50 meters. This way, point clouds can be merged even at medium-sized distances.
The detection of small targets by means of automatic target detection works very great at a distance of 7.5 meters. Detection works for almost all selected resolutions. Only at 1/32 resolution, 7.5m distance provide too few points to determine the target's center. As might be expected, the visibility decreases with increasing distance. At a distance of 35 meters, the small target can easily be detected at 1/2 resolution.