Photogrammetric mapping and measuring application using MATLAB

This paper describes a software application developed using the MATLAB language for a mobile mapping system (MMS) implemented at the University of Porto. An MMS includes a survey stage, where direct navigation and imaging sensors are mounted rigidly in a vehicle, to acquire time-synchronized navigation and image data. It also includes a processing stage which manipulates all the collected data to obtain absolute or relative coordinates for the object points appearing in the images. This report focuses mainly on the development of procedures to acquire images with time-tag information, perform several image manipulations, implement photogrammetric and matching algorithms, and put it all together in a user-friendly graphic interface. One of the main objectives during the application development was to keep this standard MMS procedure as simple as possible. MATLAB has proven to be a very well-suited platform for achieving the proposed objectives, with the advantage that it made possible the construction of a user-friendly graphic interface.