P2-4-1
AUTO-TRACKING AND 3D MEASUREMENT FOR MOVING OBJECT USING VIDEO THEODOLITE
Tsutomu KAKIUCH3, Hirofumi CHIKATSU
Department of Civil Engineering
Tokyo Denki University
JAPAN
kaki@g.dendai.ac.jp
Commission V, Working Group IC V/in
KEY WORDS: Video Theodolite, Auto-tracking, Real-time Positioning, Image Sequence, Moving Object, Stereo Adapter.
ABSTRACT
The authors have been concentrating on developing a video theodolite system consisting of a CCD camera, theodolite and a video
recorder where the camera rotation parameters can be determined in real-time while recording a moving object. The most remarkable
points of the video theodolite system are it's ability to obtain the camera rotation parameters and to calculate two-dimensional object
position in real-time while tracking a moving object.
In order to investigate an innovative application fields of the video theodolite system, a test was performed in the laboratory by fitting a
stereo adapter which can acquire stereo image to a lens of a CCD camera of the video theodolite. Fitting a stereo adapter, three-
dimensional object position can be obtained in real-time.
This paper describes auto-tracking and three-dimensional measurement techniques for a moving object using the motorized video
theodolite system.
1 INTRODUCTION
Auto-tracking and real-time positioning for a moving object is
particularly expected in a monitoring system or navigation system
for robot, construction machine and ship. Bayer, et al. (1984)
developed realtime positioning system using an electronic camera
mounted on a motorized theodolite. However, a CCD camera or
CMOS camera recorded in real-time has been expected to
become a useful tool in various digital photogrammetric fields.
The concept of a video theodolite using a CCD camera was first
published in Huang and Harley (1989) for automated camera
calibration. Test measurement was performed by Heck (1993)
using the video theodolite LEICA TM3000V to get a position of a
moving object.
The authors have been concentrating on developing a video
theodolite system consisting of a CCD camera, a theodolite and a
video recorder where the camera rotation parameters can be
determined in real-time while recording a moving object. The
current values of the rotation parameters are continuously
superimposed on image frames and thus recorded as a part of the
image data (Chikatsu and et al., 1994). The effectiveness of the
video theodolite system for dynamic analysis of human motion
has been demonstrated (Chikatsu and Murai, 1995, Chikatsu and
et al., 1996) and the application of the video theodolite system to
the ski jump also has been demonstrated (Chikatsu and et al.,
1997).
However, there are some issues for an innovative application of
the video theodolite system. These problems include rapid
acceleration of tracking speed for a moving object and three-
dimensional measurement. The first issue probably depends on
the ability of hardware, and an intelligent camera is expected
from the point of view of the real-time aspects. On the contrary, if
a stereo image can be obtained using the video theodolite system,
real-time three-dimensional measurement for a moving object
can be achieved because the rotation parameters and stereo
sequential images can be acquired in real-time while tracking a
moving object.
With this objective, a test was performed in the laboratory by
fitting a stereo adapter to a lens of a CCD camera of the video
theodolite.
2 VIDEO THEODOLITE
Figure 1 shows the motorized video theodolite (SOKKIA,
MET2NV) used in this investigation. CCD 1, the upper one in
the figure 1, is used for precise pointing to the target through the
monitor, and CCD 2, the lower one, is used as a finder. In order
to take wide scene, CCD 2 camera was mainly used in this paper.
( -x
Figure 1 Video Theodolite
