OPERATION OF THE ULTRACAMD TOGETHER WITH CCNS4/AEROCONTROL — 
FIRST EXPERIENCES AND RESULTS 
J. Kremer“, M. Gruber” 
* [GI mbH, Langenauer Strasse 46, 57223 Kreuztal, Germany — j.kremer@igi-ccns.com 
t : 5 E 
' Vexcel Imaging GmbH, Muenzgrabenstrasse 11, 8010 Graz, Austria — mgruber@vexcel.co.at 
Commission I, WG I/5 
KEY WORDS: Digital Camera, Image Acquisition, Navigation, GPS/INS, Direct Georeferencing 
ABSTRACT: 
Digital aerial cameras are ready to become the predominant sensor for photogrammetric image acquisition. One among a few 
others is the ULTRACAMp large format digital aerial camera of Vexcel Imaging, which was introduced in May 2003. 
Besides the optical and electrical properties of an aerial camera system, the environment for tasks like the mission planning, 
aircraft guidance, sensor management and the precise determination of position and angles play an important role for the successful 
operation of an aerial sensor. The CCNS4 guidance and sensor management system together with the GPS/IMU option 
AEROcontrol of 1GI has been successfully used for these tasks with different aerial sensors like analog aerial cameras, LIDAR 
systems and SAR for many years. 
The ULTRACAMp of Vexcel Imaging is the first large format digital camera that is integrated with the CCNS4/AEROcontrol. We 
present the status of the integration and the impact on the photogrammetric workflow as well as the roadmap of the ongoing 
development. 
Based on the technical specifications of both, sensor and guidance/management system, we show a variety of possible applications 
  
where the benefit of the joint use is obvious. 
1. INTRODUCTION 
In the recent years the development in the technology of digital 
aerial cameras has led to a small number of commercially 
available high resolution digital aerial cameras. Today, these 
digital aerial cameras are ready to become the predominant 
sensor for photogrammetric image acquisition. One among a 
few others is the ULTRACAM p large format digital aerial 
camera of Vexcel Imaging, which was introduced in May 2003. 
ULTRACAM | offers a conic image format of 11500 by 7500 
pixels and a frame rate better than 1 image per second. The 
camera is based on a novel multi-head design and allows flight 
missions for stereo mapping even at large image scales. 
Besides the optical and electrical properties of an aerial camera 
system, the environment for tasks like mission planning, 
aircraft guidance, sensor management and the precise 
determination of position and angles play an important role for 
the successful operation of an aerial sensor. The CCNS4 
guidance and sensor management system together with the 
GPS/IMU option AEROcontrol of IGI has been successfully 
used for these tasks with different aerial sensors like analog 
aerial cameras, LIDAR systems and SAR for many years [e.g. 
Cramer 2003 or Kremer 2001 ]. 
To enable the ULTRACAM op and the CCNS/AEROcontrol to 
work together, an electronic, mechanic and software interface 
was established. This interface was demonstrated in the first 
common projects in beginning of 2004. In these first projects 
the ULTRACAM) together with the CCNS/AEROcontrol 
proved to be an operational system for every day work. 
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This paper describes the different components of the two 
systems and how they work together. 
An aerial survey flight mission that was conducted with the 
described system is presented and the results are shown with 
respect to the 
e image quality of the digital images, the 
e quality of the directly measured position and 
orientation data and 
e to operational aspects. 
2. ULTRACAMp 
Vexcel’s large-format digital aerial camera ULTRACAMp, is a 
metric frame camera, designed for precision photogrammetric 
applications. The sensor unit is based on a multi-head design, 
which combines a set of 9 medium format CCD sensors into a 
large format panchromatic image. The multispectral channels 
are supported by four additional CCD sensors. 
Each of the 13 CCD sensors builds the front end of a separate 
imaging pipeline. It consists of the sensor, the sensor 
electronics, a high end analog/digital converter (ADC) and the 
IEEE 1394 data transfer unit. The inflight storage and 
computing unit of the camera system offers a redundant image 
storage unit for each of these 13 channels. 
Thus ULTRACAM), offers a frame rate of more than 1 frame 
per second, exploiting the benefit of its parallel system 
architecture. 
The panchromatic image consists of 11500 pixels cross track 
and 7500 pixels long track. Color is simultaneously recorded at 
Int