Optical system for posture detection comprising a scanning light source and a cube corner

System for detecting the posture of a mobile object in space, the said system comprising:

• an electro-optical device of known orientation comprising a light source, a photoreceptor and a means of analysis of the signal coming from the said photoreceptor;
• an optical assembly comprising at least one cube corner disposed on the mobile object, the said cube corner comprising a mask of known geometrical shape disposed on its entry face;
• in which:
• the source emits a parallel or almost-parallel pencil beam;
• the electro-optical device comprises means for generating a pencil light beam angularly controlled and rotating about a fixed point;
• the photoreceptor being configured for receiving the pencil beam of light retro-reflected by the cube corner when it is illuminated by the deviated pencil beam of light coming from the light source,
• the means of analysis being configured in such a manner as to determine, based on the signal coming from the photoreceptor, the position of a number of points being representative of the borders of the mask of the cube corner and, using this positional information, the posture of the cube corner in space.