PHOTOGRAMMETRIC NETWORKS FOR POSITIONAL ACCURACY

• US 20090086020A1
• Filed: 09/28/2007
• Published: 04/02/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 09/28/2007
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: The Mainz Group, LLC
• Original Assignee: Zoom Information Systems
• Inventors: Westrick, William A., Apter, Elena
• Granted Patent: US 8,264,537 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 348/140
• CPC Class Codes: G01C 11/02 Picture taking arrangements specially adapted for photogrammetry or photographic surveying, e.g. controlling overlapping of pictures
• CPC Class Codes: G01C 11/04 Interpretation of pictures
• CPC Class Codes: G01C 7/04 involving a vehicle which moves along the profile to be traced
• CPC Class Codes: G01S 19/47 the supplementary measurement being an inertial measurement, e.g. tightly coupled inertial
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 7/70 Determining position or orientation of objects or cameras camera calibration G06T7/80
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 7/73 using feature-based methods
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 7/18 Closed-circuit television [CCTV] systems, i.e. systems in which the video signal is not broadcast

Abstract

The present invention involves a surveying system and method which determines the postion of a object point using two images. First, at least two reference points appearing on the two images are correlated. Then the position of the object point is determined based on the two images and the two reference points.

Claims

1. A surveying system for determining the location of a object point from images, said computer comprising:

two image gathering devices coupled at a known relative distance, each said image gathering device adapted to generate an image; and

a location calculator, said location calculator having a plurality of instructions enabling said location calculator to correlate at least two reference points appearing on the two images, and to determine the position of the object point based on the two images and the at least two reference points.

2. The surveying system of claim 1 further comprising a global positioning system associated with said location calculator.

3. The surveying system of claim 1 further comprising an internal navigation system.

4. In surveying system, a method of determining the postion of a object point using two images, said method comprising the steps of:

correlating at least two reference points appearing on the two images; and

determining the position of the object point based on the two images and at least the two reference points.

5. The method of claim 4 further comprising the step of identifying the two reference points.

6. The method of claim 5 wherein said step of identifying is accomplised by one of manual observation, strip mapping, depth mapping, and ray mapping.

7. The method of claim 4 wherein said step of correlating is accomplised by one of mesh correlation, sequence correlation, and orientation aware weighing.

8. The method of claim 4 further comprising the step of determining the location of correlation points.

9. The method of claim 8 wherein said determining the location of correlation step uses the correlation points to correct the location of the object point.

10. The method of claim 8 wherein said step of determining the location of correlation points is accomplised by one of ramp averaging and spline averaging.

11. The method of claim 4 wherein said step of determining the position of the object point is accomplised by one of reference correlation, 3 point correlation, and RMS correlation.

12. A machine-readable program storage device for storing encoded instructions for a method of determining the location of a object point using two images, said method comprising the steps of:

correlating at least two reference points appearing on the two images; and

determining the position of the object point based on the two images and the at least two reference points.

13. The machine-readable program storage device of claim 12 wherein said method further comprises the step of identifying the two reference points.

14. The machine-readable program storage device of claim 13 wherein said method has said step of identifying being accomplised by one of manual observation, strip mapping, depth mapping, and ray mapping.

15. The machine-readable program storage device of claim 12 wherein said method has said step of correlating being accomplised by one of mesh correlation, sequence correlation, and orientation aware weighing.

16. The machine-readable program storage device of claim 12 wherein said method further comprises the step of determining the location of correlation points.

17. The machine-readable program storage device of claim 16 wherein said method includes said determining the location of correlation step using the correlation points to correct the location of the object point.

18. The machine-readable program storage device of claim 16 wherein said method includes said step of determining the location of correlation points being accomplised by one of ramp averaging and spline averaging.

19. The machine-readable program storage device of claim 12 wherein said method includes said step of determining the position of the object point being accomplised by one of reference correlation, 3 point correlation, and RMS correlation.