Measurement Uncertainty Analysis of a Robotic Total Station Simulation

The design of interactive algorithms for robotic total stations often requires hardware-in-the-loop setups during software development and verification. The use of real-time simulation setups can reduce the development and test effort significantly. However, the analysis of the simulation uncertainty is crucial for proper design of simulation setups and for the interpretation of simulation results. In this paper, we present a real-time simulation method for modern robotic total stations. We provide details for an exemplary robotic total station including models of geometry, actuators and sensors. The simulation uncertainty was estimated analytically and verified by Monte Carlo experiments.