Design and implementation of a computational processing system for off-line digital close-range photogrammetry

Through the adoption of recent innovations in automation in vision metrology, it can be demonstrated that rigorous, yet user-friendly digital photogrammetric processes of calibration and orientation/triangulation can be incorporated into a computational scheme which is on the one hand capable of meeting the demands of high metric quality. while on the other offering the facilities necessary to support wider application by non-specialist users. The software system Australis, developed for image mensuration and restitution of off-line close-range photogrammetric networks, is featured to illustrate these processes and procedures. By describing the structure and components of Australis, the authors aim to demonstrate that many processes which have on occasion been viewed to be the exclusive province of automated, high-precision vision metrology are indeed suited to more general application across a broad range of fields which involve 3D object recording via close-range imagery. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.