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team at a private or public institution. 
RESEARCH 
Research is heavily focused on digital 
photogrammetry. Due to the establish 
ment of the Center for Mapping and the 
strong demand for new developments in 
the field of digital image analysis, 
photogrammetry is enjoying an 
abundance of research projects sponsored 
by industry and government. Our 
research projects not only allow us to 
establish a pre-dominant position in 
digital photogrammetry and gain immense 
interest both from commercial companies 
and research institutions around the 
United States, but also enables us to 
support a large number of graduate and 
PhD students. Of 20 students majoring in 
photogrammetry, 11 are supported from 
research projects and another are funded 
by the department and work as teaching 
associates. 
Our research team consists of graduate 
research associates which are mostly PhD 
and graduate students majoring in 
photogrammetry, four post-doctoral 
researchers who work full-time on 
specific problems, and the system 
manager and technical engineer of the 
photogrammetry labs who maintain our 
equipment administer software of 
workstations and analytical plotters and 
are of invaluable support if sudden 
problems occur in the labs. Additionally, 
the photogrammetry faculty are available 
for ail members of the team anytime. We 
want to stress the fact that our students 
are important members of the team and 
carry a substantial load of the work to be 
done on the projects. 
The overall environment both in the 
Department of Geodetic Science and 
Surveying and at The Ohio State 
University, in general, is very open for 
interdisciplinary work. This is of major 
importance for attracting financial support 
from outside sources. The Center for 
Mapping has been established to promote 
the mapping sciences at The Ohio State 
University. Its Center for the Commercial 
Development of Space holds money from 
NASA to support research projects 
between commercial companies and the 
university. Photogrammetry faculty were 
very successful in receiving major awards, 
from these funds. Additionally, dona 
tions of equipment by different hardware 
manufacturers helped to equip a modern 
image analysis laboratory at the 
department (see next section). We think 
that it is an advantage for students to 
work on research projects sponsored by 
companies as they basically work on the 
development of commercial products, 
adapt to a project schedule, and meet 
deadlines. More importantly they also 
meet potential future employers and gain 
practical experiences which can hardly be 
taught in courses. 
CURRENT RESEARCH PROJECTS 
As mentioned before, the major direction 
of research is digital photogrammetry. 
We deal both with digitized aerial and 
terrestrial video images and apply a whole 
variety of algorithms and approaches to 
automate photogrammetric mapping and 
triangulation. In the following, we give a 
list of major research projects presently 
going on at the department. It gives the 
reader a general impression of the current 
interests of the faculty and the areas of 
expertise at Ohio State. 
A Stereo Vision System for 
Transportation Planning 
A mobile surveying vehicle is being 
developed in which a stereo-vision 
system and a GPS receiver are combined 
for on-line mapping of roadways. Two 
digital cameras mounted on a base are 
used to acquire stereopairs, which are 
stored and analyzed to extract data of the 
environment of roads. The absolute 
position, given by the GPS-receiver, 
issued is to tie together all information 
and store it in a GIS. 
Simultaneous DEM Extraction and 
Orthophotoproduction 
A constrained image matching method is 
implemented in an existing image