Computers in Industry 56 (2005) 886893

www.elsevier.com/locate/compind

Advances in photogrammetric measurement solutions

Werner Bosemann *
AICON 3D Systems GmbH, Biberweg 30 C, D-38114 Braunschweig, Germany
Received 1 December 2004; received in revised form 31 March 2005; accepted 31 May 2005
Available online 10 October 2005

Abstract
In recent years, industrial photogrammetry has emerged from a highly specialized niche technology to a well established tool
in industrial coordinate measurement applications with numerous installations in a significantly growing market of flexible and
portable optical measurement systems. This is due to the development of powerful, but affordable video and computer
technology.
The increasing industrial requirements for accuracy, speed, robustness and ease of use of these systems together with a
demand for the highest possible degree of automation have forced universities and system manufacturers to develop hard- and
software solutions to meet these requirements.
The paper will show the latest trends in hardware development, especially new generation digital and/or intelligent cameras,
aspects of image engineering like use of controlled illumination or projection technologies, and algorithmic and software aspects
like automation strategies or new camera models.
The basic qualities of digital photogrammetry-like portability and flexibility on one hand and fully automated quality control
on the othersometimes lead to certain conflicts in the design of measurement systems for different online, offline or real-time
solutions. The paper will further show, how these tools and methods are combined in different configurations to be able to cover
the still growing demands of the industrial end-users.
# 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Industrial photogrammetry; Close range; Mobile; Industrial application; 3D point measurement

1. Introduction
Enforced by the increasing demand for fast and
mobile coordinate measurements in industrial applications, optical measurement systems based on
* Tel.: +49 531 58 000 58; fax: +49 531 58 000 60.
E-mail address: werner.boesemann@aicon.de.
URL: http://www.aicon.de.

photogrammetric principles have gained much importance and are now widely established in many areas.
Fifteen years ago most of the measurements were
performed with coordinate measurement machines
(CMMs) in protected measurement areas by highly
specialized personal. The use of photogrammetry
systems was restricted to niche areas were standard
technologies were not able to perform the tasks. With
the introduction of digital camera technology and

0166-3615/$ see front matter # 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
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W. Bosemann / Computers in Industry 56 (2005) 886893

affordable computing power early digital photogrammetric systems for industrial measurement were
designed. It was believed at that time that these
systems would soon replace many of the traditional
measurement systems. A few years later, these
systems were still a domain of experts in photogrammetry. The technology was perceived to be
complicated, expensive and generally not to be
trusted. Questions about accuracy, traceability and
certification of systems added to these problems. With
the growing number of successfully implemented
systems this situation has meanwhile significantly
improved. This is mainly due to two reasons.
Significant improvements in available hardware,
better CCD cameras and faster computers together
with new and better software have broadened the
range of applications for these systems. Secondly, the
demands for fast and on site coordinate measurements
have increased rapidly with the still rising quality
requirements. The reduction of the gap width of a car
door from 3 to 2 mm for example can change the
whole quality control strategy for a car production and
requires additional on site measurements of tooling
and parts. With a general shift of the location of
measurements from the CMM room to the production
line also the type of system user changed from
measurement specialists to production generalists.
This also changed the requirements for automation
and ease of use for these systems.
This paper will show the recent developments in
digital photogrammetric systems for industrial measurements. These systems can be divided in four
different groups:
1. Offline photogrammetry: Offline systems are the
most flexible and portable photogrammetry systems for industrial measurements. They follow the
classical photogrammetric procedure of targeting,
image acquisition, image processing and coordinate estimation. Due to the time offset between
image acquisition and availability of results and the
fact that usually the camera is not connected to the
processing computer, these systems are called
offline.
2. Online photogrammetry: In an online system, the
cameras are directly connected to the computer and
the results are available immediately after the
measurement. In a combination with probing

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devices these systems are a kind of symbiosis

between optical and tactile measurements. If the
frequency of the measurement corresponds to the
frequency of change or movement of the part, these
systems are called real-time systems.
Both type of systems are designed for pointwise
measurement of parts.
3. Scanning systems are able to acquire dense surface
data: The first three groups are all universal, very
flexible and mobile systems to be used in a wide
range of applications.
4. The last group of industrial measurement systems
are dedicated systems: These systems are adapted
for the measurements of special parts or products.
Usually they allow for online measurements and
are integrated in a production environment. These
systems allow for highest automation and ease of
use [4].

2. History
Up to the late 1980s, industrial photogrammetry
was necessarily linked to film based systems. This was
also one of the main drawbacks as the resulting time
delay between image capture and availability of
results was often too long for use in industrial
applications. These systems either used cameras and
systems from the aerial domain or were already
adapted for close range applications. Such cameras
were for example specially developed metric cameras
like the CRC 1 and CRC 2 from Geodetic Services Inc.
(GSI) and the Rollei LFC, or modified professional
mid-format and 35 mm cameras like the Rollei 3000
and 6000 series (Fig. 1) which formed so called semimetric cameras by using a reseau grid in the image
plane.
The digital age began on the processing side with the
use of digitizers and scanners as digital monocomparators. Digitizers were mainly used with natural targets in
architectural applications or as-build-monitoring of
power plants and seldom for industrial measurements.
High end scanners like the GSI Autoset or the Rollei
Reseau Scanner RS1 (Fig. 2) already used artificial
retroreflective targets for (semi-) automatic image point
measurements [10]. The calculation of the point
coordinates was performed in a bundle adjustment in
an often tedious procedure for the calculation of starting

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W. Bosemann / Computers in Industry 56 (2005) 886893

The final coordinates of the measured points were

calculated in a bundle adjustment with simultaneous
camera calibration. Programs like CAP or Bingo were
already designed for close range applications, but
required still a lot of manual input. The calculation
time could easily be several hours for a bigger job.
These early systems for digital industrial photogrammetry were called videogrammetry, softcopy
photogrammetry or simply digital photogrammetry
and are the basis for our modern systems for industrial
photogrammetry [11].

3. State of the art

Fig. 1. Rollei 6008 metric.

Constant development and improvement of hardand software have led to the development of our
modern industrial photogrammetry systems.
3.1. Cameras

Fig. 2. Rollei scanner RS1.

values for the adjustment and the manual blunder

removal. The systems required expert knowledge for
their operation, but the combination of large format
cameras with 23 cm by 23 cm film format and precision
scanners was able to deliver unmatched accuracies of
up to 1:200,000 for large scale objects and were
successfully implemented in many locations, mainly in
the aerospace domain.
The availability of electronic cameras and personal
computers opened the path for the use of industrial
photogrammetry systems in a wider range [9], but
especially the resolution of 256  256 or
512  512 pixels was much to low for many of the
applications. The resolution was enhanced by micro
scanning cameras like the Kontron ProgRes or the
JenScan with up to 12 Mio. Pixel or macro scanning
cameras like the Rollei RSC or the UMK Scan with
approximately 15,000  11,000 pixel. In general,
these cameras were too expensive and were limited
in accuracy through the scanning mechanism.

The Kodak DCS 200 was the first still video camera
with good resolution (3 Mio. Pixel) and internal
storage of pictures on PCMCIA cards. Today cameras
with 14 Mio. Pixel are available. This type of cameras
are very easy to use like a normal camera, but also
have a good geometric stability as required for
photogrammetric measurements.
Some companies have developed special photogrammetric cameras with integrated processing
capabilities, so called intelligent cameras like the
INCA from GSI [6] or the ICAM from Imetric.
Highspeed cameras are used to monitor dynamic
processes. Most cameras available allow to record
sequences with more than 1000 Hz. Recording time is
limited to a few seconds, processing is performed
online. The TraceCAM F (Fig. 3) developed by the
DaimlerChrysler research department in Ulm allows

Fig. 3. TraceCAM F.

W. Bosemann / Computers in Industry 56 (2005) 886893

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the recording and online processing of image

sequences of basically unlimited duration. The core
of the solution is a fast image measurement inside the
camera with a special hard- and software solution. A
camera with a resolution of 1280  1024 pixels and a
frame rate of up to 485 Hz is connected to a field
programmable gate array (FPGA) through a CameraLink interface. Image points are detected in real-time
through parallel pipeline processing in the FPGA [5].
The system uses a specially developed high power
LED ring flash to be used in combination with
retroreflective targets. In pulsed mode, power output is
300 W. Pulse time can be set from 1 to 100 ms. This
way extremely short exposure times can be realized.
This is required for high speed movements, e.g. in
wheel measurements at driving speed up to 200 km/h
(125 mph).
Many applications require ruggedized hardware.
The AICON BlueCAM (Fig. 4) is an off-the-shelf
CCD camera with protective housing and integrated
illumination and trigger button.

Additionally the background information of the

pictures is preserved. Some applications use projected
targets like dot or grid patterns
The next and maybe most important step towards
automation was the invention of coded targets [2]. The
first coded targets were introduced by AICON in 1991.
These targets have an unique identifier either in form
of a ring code (Fig. 5) or a geometric target pattern.
Each point is detected, measured and labelled
automatically by the software. Probing devices
combine optical and tactile measurement techniques.
The same principle is used for hidden point adapters.

3.2. Targetting

3.3. Software and algorithms

Retroreflective targets have been in use for

industrial photogrammetry for many years. The
resulting quasi-binary images allow for a good
separation of target and background. Also the
complete illumination chain is controlled which make
the image acquisition much more independent from
individual camera settings. Another reason was the
shorter search and measurement time in the quasibinary digital images, but with the actual processing
power this is of less importance. Plain paper targets
can be used without noticeable loss of performance.

Beneath improvements in image measurements,

which are also related to software, the second major
step was the development of robust calculation
techniques [8]. Basically only two errors can lead
to a failure in the bundle adjustment:

Fig. 4. AICON BlueCAM and BlueScreen.

Fig. 6. Graphic result of bundle adjustment.

Fig. 5. Coded targets.

 bad point distributions in the images lead to week

geometries and wrong starting values, and

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Fig. 7. Deformation analysis.

Fig. 8. AICON DPA Pro.

 large outliers usually influence other good points in

the blunder detection procedure.
The first point can be handled by further geometry
checks of the point distributions. For the second point,
enhanced blunder estimation strategies like least
median squares estimation instead of least minimum
squares have been developed [7].
The last important point in the software is an
efficient user interface which is basically selfexplanatory and intuitive to handle. Fig. 6 shows a
graphical result of a bundle adjustment which helps
the user to analyse camera positions and ray
geometries. A major part of the software development
is now the programming of post-processing functionalities like deformation analysis (Fig. 7) or geometry
checks like roundness checks or CAD comparison.
Here often interfaces to existing software packages are
created.

4.2. Online photogrammetry

In an online setup, two or more high resolution
digital cameras are mounted on tripods and their
relative position is calculated in a kind of calibration
procedure. In the calibrated camera setup points
identified in the pictures are calculated very fast by
simple ray intersection. Another possibility is the
calculation of the camera positions through spatial
resection over a control point field of coded targets
which are measured beforehand with an offline
system. With this methodology even relative movements between cameras and part during the measurement can be accounted for. Examples for these types
of system are the GSI V-STARS M or the AICON
TraceCAM systems (Fig. 10). Especially the TraceCAM is also used for tracking and positioning

4. Systems
The following chapter shows typical system
examples.
4.1. Offline photogrammetry
A typical system like the AICON DPA-Pro (Fig. 8)
or GSI V-STARS S consists of a high resolution digital
camera, a notebook with the evaluation software and
targetting material (Fig. 9). Typical applications are
the measurement of large parts and any kind of
deformation analysis [1].

Fig. 9. Targetting.

W. Bosemann / Computers in Industry 56 (2005) 886893

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Fig. 12. ProCAM system.

Fig. 10. TraceCAM online system.

Fig. 11. Probe.

applications [1]. An additional touch probe as shown

in Fig. 11 allows to combine optical and tactile
measurements.
A different type of online system is the AICON
ProCAM (Fig. 12). Here the principle of a fixed
camera setup and moving targets (on the touch probe)
is inverted [3]. The camera with the probe tip forms an
active probe. Reference points outside the measurement are used to navigate the probe in space (Fig. 13).
The advantages of this approach are a faster setup and
the possibility to create large measurement setups [1].
A subset of the online systems are the real time
systems. These systems are mainly used for object
tracking and motion control.

Fig. 13. ProCAM measurement.

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Fig. 16. TubeInspect.

Fig. 14. Steinbichler Comet VZ400.

model, where the single patches are shown in different

colours.

4.3. Surface scanning

4.4. Dedicated systems
White-light surface scanners like the Steinbichler
Comet (Fig. 14) or the ATOS system from GOM use
an active fringe projection in combination with one or
two cameras [12]. They are not exactly photogrammetric systems, but use mainly photogrammetric
principles for camera setup and calibration. The
systems are able to deliver dense point clouds, but are
limited in field of view to about 500 mm  500 mm.
The evaluation procedure is usually a combination of
coded light technologies and phase shifting methods.
For the measurement of larger objects several
patches can be stitched together by a cloud matching
procedure or a through a network of references points,
usually created with an offline photogrammetry
system. Fig. 15 shows a result for a complete car

A typical example for a dedicated system is the

optical tube measurement system TubeInspect
(Fig. 16) developed by AICON. The optical tube
measurement system enables the high-precision
measurement of brake pressure lines or hydraulic
lines in motor vehicles or aircraft. The system is
programmable and is able to measure any form of line
or tube [1]. The results, bending angles, torsions
and lengths are directly compared with the design data
and graphically represented. The system is fully
automatic from measurement to protocol generation.
It is possible to send correction data to networked
bending machines to manufacture corrected tubes
(Fig. 17).

Fig. 15. Scanning result.

Fig. 17. Measurement report and correction network.

W. Bosemann / Computers in Industry 56 (2005) 886893

5. Conclusions
The growing number of successful installed
systems has significantly improved the confidence
of the industrial system users and decision makers in
this technology. Classical coordinate measurements
with CMMs still account for most of the measurements performed today, but there is a growing move
from measurement room quality control to fast and
flexible on site measurements. On the other hand,
there is a growing competition from other portable
measurement systems, like articulated arms, laser
trackers or laser scanners.

References
[1] AICON: product information DPA-Pro, TraceCAM, ProCAM
and TubeInspect, 2005. http://www.aicon.de.
[2] W. Bosemann, K. Sinnreich, Vollautomatische Punktsuche und
Punkterkennung im Digitalen Bild, Publikationen der
Deutschen Gesellschaft fur Photogrammetrie und Fernerkundung, Band 2, Seite, 1994, pp. 215219.
[3] W. Bosemann, C.T. Schneider, Online 3D measurement using
inverse photogrammetry, in videometrics and optical methods
for 3D shape measurement, in: Proceedings of the SPIE, vol.
4309, 2001.
[4] W. Bosemann, Online, offline, realtimerecent developments
in industrial photogrammetry, in: Proceedings of the SPIE,
Videometrics VII, vol. 5013, 2003.
[5] W. Bosemann, G. Wiora, P. Babrou, High speed dynamicmeasurement of photogrammetric targets, in: Proceedings of the
CMSC Conference, 2004.

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[6] J. Dold, Photogrammetrie in der Industriellen Messtechnik 98,

Deutscher Verein fur Vermessungswesen 32/1998, Wittwer
Verlag, Seite, 1998, pp. 93119.
[7] R. Godding, M. Lehmann, G. Rawiel, Robot adjustment and
3D calibrationphotogrammetric quality control in daily use,
in: Optical 3D Measurement Techniques IV, WichmannnVerlag, 1997, pp. 158165.
[8] T.H. Luhmann, Nahbereichsphotogrammetrie, WichmannVerlag, Heidelberg, 2000.
[9] J. Peipe, High-resolution CCD area array sensors in digital
close range photogrammetry, in: Proceedings of the SPIE,
Videometrics V, vol. 7, San Diego, 1997.
[10] Rollei, Product information Rolleimetric, 2005. http://
www.rolleimetric.de.
[11] C.-T. Schneider, K. Sinnreich, DPA-WINa PC based digital
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[12] Steinbichler. Product information COMET, 2005. http://
www.steinbichler.de/.
Werner Bosemann studied geodesy in
Hanover, Germany and Fredericton,
Canada. Diploma 1998 in Hanover.
Research assistant at the Technical University (TU) Braunschweig and the
Volkswagen R&D Department. Received
his PhD from TU Braunschweig, Germany in 1994. Since 1992 working for
AICON 3D Systems, since 1996 as President and Managing Director. His
research interested are focussed on the development of advanced
photogrammetric solutions for industrial measurements.