Some Thoughts on the Emergence of Digital Close Range Photogrammetry

This presentation offers some thoughts on the emergence (that is essentially to say the commercial acceptance and exploitation) of close range digital photogrammetric systems. The discussion is restricted to systems based on standard photogrammetric processes involving digital frame imagery. Systems are classified into three tiers which are distinguished not only by accuracy and cost, but also by the degree to which a technology transfer has taken place from the specialist photogrammetrist to the non-specialist user. This technology transfer, it will be argued, has facilitated dramatic growth in the application of low accuracy, low cost three dimensional modelling systems in areas such as heritage recording, multimedia, process plant documentation and forensic photogrammetry. Along with automation, this technology transfer has also largely accounted for the wider use of high accuracy, high cost, off line and real time vision metrology systems in large scale industrial metrology. Rapid growth in these two system categories is then contrasted against the more modest advances being witnessed in the traditional close range photogrammetric service sector. Prospects for the future are also touched upon.