Journal of Surveying Engineering

The steady decrease in cost of a digital camera and frame grabber, together with higher resolution will result in more photogrammetric applications using such a camera. This is because of the advantages of speed and automation in image acquisition and measurement. In this paper, a standard frame‐transfer charged‐coupled device (CCD) camera was used to acquire close‐range digital images for phototriangulation. Its accuracy in determining three‐dimensional coordinates of premarked targets was compared with values derived from the conventional surveying method of triangulation. Two image‐processing techniques, image correlation and moment preservation, were utilized to measure premarked targets interactively on a computer monitor.

Precise machinery surveys, incorporating laser targeting, can now be carried out in near real time using an electronic theodolite system. Within the Industrial Alignment Project, a cooperative research and development effort involving the Department of Surveying Engineering at The University of Calgary, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, and 14 industry partners, an electronic theodolite system has been developed and applied in a number of precise machinery surveys. In this paper the electronic theodolite system is described, including the computer programs for data collection, network adjustment, and geometric form fitting. Possibilities for laser targeting are then discussed, followed by a detailed description of three different applications. The first application is the alignment of a test rig, the second the alignment of a rotary cement kiln, and the third the surfacing profiling of a granulator tire and trunnion. These three examples of the use of laser targeting in precise machinery surveys is indicative of the wide variety of potential applications in this field.

NavTrax is a dispatch‐type automatic vehicle location and navigation (AVLN) system targeted for the specialized fleet‐management market. Discussed in the paper are its positioning, communications, digital mapping, and host (dispatch) components. Its positioning component is a robust GPS‐based system integrated with dead‐reckoning sensors via a specialized class of filtering techniques similar but not equivalent to a Kalman filter. The communication module presently employs cellular or UHF ratio‐type technology. The digital‐mapping component is an intelligent digital single‐line road‐network data base stored in vector form with full connectivity. A limited form of map matching (MM) is performed for integrated navigation, but the main purpose of MM is for the definition of location. This approach allows Nav/Trax to employ less‐expensive digital maps as compared to AVLN systems that are purely terrestrial‐based and use the map for positioning. The paper concludes with a discussion of a demonstration project with the Calgary Police Department.