Digital close-range photogrammetry for surface measurement

The recent development of CCD-cameras and powerful PC's allows the step from analogue to digital photogrammetry, especially for close range applications. At the Department of Photogrammetry and Cartography at the Technical University of Berlin a completely digital system for image acquisition and evaluation has been designed and realized in an experimental hardware and software configuration. The mobile PC-controlled image acquisition module works with one or two CCD- cameras to provide stereo images. The digital imagery is stored on hard disk and can subsequently be evaluated using various image processing techniques (e.g. image matching for automatic coordinate measurement). The hardware and software components of the current system are presented and some application examples concerning the measurement of rough and textured surfaces like rock or soil are discussed to demonstrate the actual system performance.