Robust and Efficient Solution to Absolute Orientation in Low-Altitude Photogrammetry

Abstract

Absolute orientation is a classic photogrammetric task for recovering the transformation relationship between two coordinate systems. In low-altitude photogrammetric field, arbitrary coordinate system in the network of aerial triangulation is spatial auxiliary coordinate system, which is quite different from ground photogrammetric coordinate. So the commonly used solution to absolute orientation with simplified parameters is unsuitable for low-altitude photogrammetry. In this paper, a novel solution of absolute orientation is proposed, the initial parameters of absolute orientation can be solved by the formula using centroids of coordinates instead of simplified parameters, then the parameters of absolute orientation are iteratively refined by Levenberg-Marquardt algorithm. Experimental results show that the solution is effective and practical. It may be suitable to implement absolute orientation in low-altitude photogrammetry.