AUTOMATION IN PHOTOGRAMMETRY
by GILBERT G, LORENZ, Director, Mapping and Geographic
Sciences Laboratory, U. S. Army Engineer Topographic
Laboratories, (USAETL)
INTRODUCTION
l. As it has in so many other fields, automation is having
its impact on photogrammetry. This fact is not new to most of
you since there have been various papers, symposia, conferences,
and discussions on aspects of this subject over the years. At
the Tenth Congress of the International Society of Photogrammetry,
held in Lisbon, Portugal in September 1964, one of the technical
sessions of Commission II was devoted to automation with an invited
paper by Mr. Randall D. Esten on "Automatic Photogrammetric Instru-
ments." In this report, he reviewed and summarized 16 presented
papers, covering the latest developments. Another more recent paper,
covering the approach used in one organization, was presented at
the Semi-Annual Convention of the American Society of Photogrammetry
at Los Angeles, California in September 1966, and entitled "Photo-
grammetric Automation at the Army Map Service," by Joseph B. Theis.
2. The subject, Automation in Photogrammetry per se, covers
a field which is much broader than is possible to treat in suffi-
cient detail in a paper of this length. Even if photogrammetry is
limited to its application in Surveying and Mapping, Automation in
Photogrammetry covers many topics which cannot be adequately dis-
cussed here. It would properly cover efforts to record camera posi-
tion and orientation at the instant of exposure and techniques to
use such data directly in the mapping process without manual manipu-
lation. It would also include automatic equipment for photographic
processing and printing of film and diapositive plates and for
correlating of auxiliary data with the photography. Equipment and
techniques for identifying and locating control points on the photogra-
phy, equipment and techniques for selecting and transferring pass
points between photographs, equipment for measuring and recording
photographic coordinates, techniques for strip and block triangulation,
and last but not least, equipment for compiling a manuscript from
a stereopair of photographs are all suitable topics. It could also
cover computer techniques for controlling a mapping project, storage
and retrieval of control data, and several other subjects.
3. In order that this paper can be more than a cursory review
of these many topics, the subject to be treated in this paper is
limited to automatic compilation of manuscripts from a pair of aerial
photographs. Considerable progress has been made in the last several
years in the United States in this important area. Therefore, it is
appropriate to review the history of automatic .compilation develop-
ment, report the current status in the development and testing of
equipment for this purpose, and make some prognostications of
future utilization.
