An Object-space Simulation Method for Low-cost Digital Camera Stability Testing

Abstract

The widespread availability and low cost of digital cameras has been the impetus for their increased use for photogrammetric applications. The metric suitability of these cameras is critically dependent upon the stability of their interior orientation parameters (IOPs), which can be evaluated by simulation methods. Focused on aerial photogrammetry, this paper presents a new method that assesses the impact of camera stability in terms of the accuracy of object space terrain reconstruction from a large number of simulations. The results of this method are compared with those from two simulation procedures based on single-photo resection for ten sets of IOPs from three different low-cost digital cameras and are found to be in close agreement in terms of the decision about camera stability. Detailed analyses show the method is relatively insensitive to the distribution of ground control points used for camera orientation and the realism of the randomly-generated terrain, but is highly sensitive to the range of simulated terrain heights and image point measurement precision.