Armin Gruen

• Prof. Dr.-Ing. Dr. h.c.
• Professor Emeritus at ETH Zurich

Regular monitoring activities are important for assessing the influence of unfavourable factors on corals and tracking subsequent recovery or decline. Deep learning-based underwater photogrammetry provides a comprehensive solution for automatic large-scale and precise monitoring. It can quickly acquire a large range of underwater coral reef images,...

Recently developed automatic dense image matching algorithms are now being implemented for DSM/DTM production, with their pixel-level surface generation capability offering the prospect of partially alleviating the need for manual and semi-automatic stereoscopic measurements. In this paper, five commercial/public software packages for 3D surface ge...

Uncontrolled refraction of optical rays in underwater photogrammetry is known to reduce its accuracy potential. Several strategies have been proposed aiming at restoring the accuracy to levels comparable with photogrammetry applied in air. These methods are mainly based on rigours modelling of the refraction phenomenon or empirical iterative refrac...

Changes in technology are coming at an ever increasing pace. This holds for photogrammetry and remote sensing as well. “Everything moves” – this is why I chose this topic to shed some light on some of the recent developments. Naturally, this undertaking can never be complete in the sense of covering all developments in Photogrammetry and Remote Sen...

The latest advances in technical characteristics of unmanned aerial systems (UAS) and their onboard sensors opened the way for smart flying vehicles exploiting new application areas and allowing to perform missions seemed to be impossible before. One of these complicated tasks is the 3D reconstruction and monitoring of large-size, complex, grid-lik...

Underwater photogrammetry is increasingly being used by marine ecologists because of its ability to produce accurate, spatially detailed, non-destructive measurements of benthic communities, coupled with affordability and ease of use. However, independent quality control, rigorous imaging system set-up, optimal geometry design and a strict modeling...

Objects and structures realized by connecting and bending wires are common in modern architecture, furniture design, metal sculpting, etc. The 3D reconstruction of such objects with traditional range- or image-based methods is very difficult and poses challenges due to their unique characteristics such as repeated structures, slim elements, holes,...

Systematic errors may result from the adoption of an incomplete functional model that is not able to properly incorporate all the effects involved in the image formation process. These errors very likely appear as systematic residual patterns in image observations and produce deformations of the photogrammetric model in object space. The Brown/Beye...

The process of modern photogrammetry converts images and/or LiDAR data into usable 2D/3D/4D products. The photogrammetric industry offers engineering-grade hardware and software components for various applications. While some components of the data processing pipeline work already automatically, there is still substantial manual involvement require...

ETH Zurich Research Collection https://www.research-collection.ethz.ch/handle/20.500.11850/409483

As a continuation of Ice, Cloud, and Land Elevation Satellite-1 (ICESat-1), the ICESat-2/Advanced Topographic Laser Altimeter System (ATLAS) employs a micro-pulse multi-beam photon counting approach to produce photon data for measuring global terrain. Few studies have assessed the accuracy of different ATLAS channels in retrieving ground topography...

Openings such as windows and doors are essential components of architectural wall surfaces. It is still a challenge to reconstruct them robustly from unstructured 3D point clouds because of occlusions, noises and non-uniformly distributed points. Current research primarily focuses on meliorating the robustness of detection and pays little attention...

A topo-bathymetric Lidar acquisition of the Tetiaroa atoll was carried out as part of the Moorea IDEA project in May 2017. A point cloud of approximately 1.4 billion points with an average point density of 25 pt/m 2 was derived from the acquisition with a Riegl LMS-VQ820G full-waveform green Lidar system mounted on a Eurocopter AS350 at 500 m fligh...

This paper reports about an effort to generate LoD3 models of buildings semi-automatically, with the highest possible level of automation. It is work in progress. We use multi-sensor data like aerial images from a 5-head camera with a GSD of 10 cm, UAV images, and aerial and mobile LiDAR point clouds. We distinguish two cases: LoD2 models are avail...

Underwater photogrammetry is a well-established technique for measuring and modelling the subaquatic environment in fields ranging from archaeology to marine ecology. While for simple tasks the acquisition and processing of images have become straightforward, applications requiring relative accuracy better then 1:1000 are still considered challengi...

This study presents an evaluation of a cheap consumer-grade camera used for modelling a coral reef section. We evaluate the quality of a reconstructed coral reef using GoPro cameras and a high-end camera with data from an actual coral reef dataset. We also investigate components of the processing pipeline (like image quality) separate from the fina...

A 3D forest monitoring system, called FORSAT (a satellite very high resolution image processing platform for forest assessment), was developed for the extraction of 3D geometric forest information from very high resolution (VHR) satellite imagery and the automatic 3D change detection. FORSAT is composed of two complementary tasks: (1) the geometric...

A satellite processing platform for high resolution forest assessment (FORSAT) was developed. It generates the digital surface models (DSMs) of the forest canopy by advanced processing of the very-high resolution (VHR) optical satellite imagery and automatically matches the pre- and post-fire DSMs for 3D change detection. The FORSAT software system...

The main aim of this study is to investigate the radiometric and geometric quality of Gokturk-2 images over Moorea Island in French Polynesia and also to assess 3D processing and surface model generation capabilities. Similar processing steps have been carried out using Pleiades image triplets over the same area and comparisons have been performed...

Creating 3-dimensional (3D) models of underwater scenes has become a common approach for monitoring coral reef changes and its structural complexity. Also in underwater archeology, 3D models are often created using underwater optical imagery. In this paper, we focus on the aspect of detecting small changes in the coral reef using a multi-temporal p...

Forest agencies give special attention to forest fires where post-disaster loss can rarely be gauged in a quick and economic way unless an appropriate technology is adopted. Determination of the planimetric and volumetric changes between pre-and post-fire is in high demand. The FORSAT system (a satellite processing platform for high resolution fore...

The evolution of underwater photogrammetry allows to realize 3D models of submerged object and structures throughout the use of rapid and efficient procedures either in terms of data acquisition and data processing. These procedures are based on solutions that are applied using natural control points, signalized markers and tie points; the most com...

The Moorea Island Digital Ecosystem Avatar (IDEA) project has been initiated in 2013 by a group of international researchers to build a virtual representation of Moorea Island, which can serve as model for data acquisition, data processing and simulations for tropical islands in general. The aim of the project is to model an entire ecosystem, obser...

Geoinformatics education is a key factor for sustainable development of geo-spatial sciences and industries. There have been a variety of educational activities focusing on education and training, technology transfer, and capability building in photogrammetry, remote sensing, and spatial information science, together known as Geoinformatics. Geoinf...

AKCA et al ISPRS PRAG PAPER VOLUMETRIC FOREST CHANGE DETECTION THROUGH VHR SATELLITE IMAGERY The International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences, Volume XLI-B8, 2016 XXIII ISPRS Congress, 12–19 July 2016, Prague, Czech Republic

Quick and economical ways of detecting of planimetric and volumetric changes of forest areas are in high demand. A research platform, called FORSAT (A satellite processing platform for high resolution forest assessment), was developed for the extraction of 3D geometric information from VHR (very-high resolution) imagery from satellite optical senso...

Quick and economical ways of detecting of planimetric and volumetric changes of forest areas are in high demand. A research platform, called FORSAT (A satellite processing platform for high resolution forest assessment), was developed for the extraction of 3D geometric information from VHR (very-high resolution) imagery from satellite optical senso...

Recent advances in automation of photogrammetric 3D modelling software packages have stimulated interest in reconstructing highly accurate 3D object geometry in unconventional environments such as underwater utilizing simple and low-cost camera systems. The accuracy of underwater 3D modelling is affected by more parameters than in single media case...

Recent advances in automation of photogrammetric 3D modelling software packages have stimulated interest in reconstructing highly accurate 3D object geometry in unconventional environments such as underwater utilizing simple and low-cost camera systems. The accuracy of underwater 3D modelling is affected by more parameters than in single media case...

Due to the rapid process of urbanization, there is an increasing demand for detecting building changes over time using very high-resolution (VHR) images. Traditional two-dimensional (2-D) change detection methods are limited due to the image perspective variation and illumination discrepancies. One current trend for building detection combines the...

Recently developed automatic dense image matching algorithms are now being implemented for DSM/DTM production, with their pixel-level surface generation capability offering the prospect of partially alleviating the need for manual and semi-automatic stereoscopic measurements. In this paper, five commercial/public software packages for 3D surface ge...

There is a great demand for studying the changes of buildings over time. The current trend for building change detection combines the orthophoto and DSM (Digital Surface Models). The pixel-based change detection methods are very sensitive to the quality of the images and DSMs, while the object-based methods are more robust towards these problems. I...

Abstract Automatic change detection and geo-database updating in the urban environment are difficult tasks. There has been much research on detecting changes with satellite and aerial images, but studies have rarely been performed at the street level, which is complex in its 3D geometry. Contemporary geo-databases include 3D street-level objects, w...

Both unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) technology and Mobile Mapping Systems (MMS) are important techniques for surveying and mapping. In recent years, the UAV technology has seen tremendous interest, both in the mapping community and in many other fields of application. Carrying off-the shelf digital cameras, the UAV can collect high quality aerial op...

More than half of the global population lives in urban areas. This will increase to 70% by 2050. Urban growth is most rapid in the developing world, where cities gain an average of five million residents every month. As cities grow in size and population, harmony among the spatial, social and environmental aspects of a city and between their inhabi...

The Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) technology has gained great attention in recent years. It is viewed as a low-cost alternative for local large scale aerial mapping and other applications requiring the modeling of a relative small area only. In this paper we describe our UAV mission and the data processing steps to generate a 3D model of the NUS (N...

With digital globes like Google Earth or Microsoft Bing Maps the access to virtual, geo-referenced 3D data has become considerably easier and these sources of information are now frequently used by a worldwide audience. The underlying technologies in sensors and data processing have strongly influenced many disciplines and have led in many cases to...

This paper describes on an accuracy investigation of point clouds which generated by MMS (Mobile Mapping System). In recent years 3D measurement technologies have advanced significantly. At the same time, MMS have become common measurement instruments for 3D application fields such as road facility management and related fields. We have to consider...

This paper describes on the accuracy assessment for the Mobile Mapping System (MMS) point clouds and its practical experiments. In recent years 3D measurement technologies have advanced significantly. Especially, MMS has been becoming to be common as one of 3D measurement instruments. We have to consider the effective accuracy assessment method sta...

The article describes the 3D surveying and modeling of the Behaim globe, the oldest still existing and intact globe of the earth, preserved at the German National Museum of Nuremberg, Germany. The work is primarily performed using high-resolution digital images and automatic photogrammetric techniques. Triangulation-based laser scanning is also emp...

The Buddhist fortress Drapham Dzong is located in the Bumthang District in central Bhutan on a mountain ridge at approximately 2930 m altitude. A surveying mission was carried out with the goal to produce a textured 3D model of the site, together with a conventional 2D map and an orthophoto. The remote and exposed location of the site makes traditi...

Nowadays, the use of laser scanner devices as an active technique for acquiring 3D information is growing fast. The huge amount of object points produced with less effort than other 3D acquisition techniques is one of the reasons for interest. For accurate measurements a sophisticated sensor model and calibration procedure is an important prerequis...

Around 1200 AD, a number of remarkable rock churches were constructed in Lalibela, a town in northern Ethiopia. One construction manner stands apart in its uniqueness. This is the rock-hewn monolithic church, which while imitating a built-up structure is actually cut in one piece from the rock and separated from it by an all-around trench. The best...

In this paper we present the modeling and visualization of the cultural heritage area of Bamiyan, Afghanistan. The region is situated ca 200 km north-west of Kabul and it was one of the major Buddhist centres until the ninth century AD. The two standing Buddhas belonged to some of the most famous Buddhist monuments world-wide. In 2001 they were des...

The recording and 3D modeling of large Cultural Heritage sites is currently receiving much attention. This has two main reasons. On the one hand UNESCO pays more attention to large cultural and natural sites and on the other hand we have a wide array of new technologies available which greatly support the efficient generation, administration and an...

The objective of this paper is to present an approach for assessing tree growth and shrub encroachment between 1997 and 2002 in open mire land using CIR-aerial images, DSMs and LiDAR data. The study area is located in the Pre-alpine zone of Central Switzerland. The present study was carried out in the framework of the Swiss Mire Protection Program,...

extraction. ABSTRACT: This paper describes the sensor modeling and the photogrammetric triangulation procedure for the TLS (Three-Line-Scanner) system. This system is a new airborne digital sensor developed by Starlabo, Tokyo, jointly with the Institute of Industrial Science, University of Tokyo. It utilizes the Three-Line-Scanner principle to capt...

Due to the increasing costs of high resolution satellite image data with stereo capabilities, products like accurate DSMs are becoming attractive for more and more users and applications. The Japanese optical sensor ALOS/PRISM which was launched in January 2006 has stereo capabilities by providing a simultaneous acquired image triplet. We have publ...

One of the most important products of ALOS/PRISM image data are accurate DSMs. To exploit the full potential of the full resolution of PRISM for DSM generation, a highly developed image matcher is needed. As a member of the validation and calibration team for PRISM we published earlier results of DSM generation using PRISM image triplets in combina...

A vision based method to track and recover 3-D shape and motion information from video sequences is presented. Although video sequences acquired from multiple static synchronized CCD cameras have been used as a tool for 3-D reconstruction of the shape and the movement of a human body before, the precision and reliability remain as concerning issues...

The Hindu and Buddhist monuments of Angkor in Cambodia are the legacy of highly developed Khmer empires. Well-known for their structural and surface complexity they constitute a great challenge to any attempt towards precise and detailed 3D measurements and modeling. This paper reports about a pilot project using modern techniques of analytical and...

Image and template matching is probably the most important function in digital photogrammetry and also in automated modelling and mapping. Many approaches for matching have evolved over the years, but the problem is still unsolved in general terms. This paper describes the development of image matching techniques in photogrammetry over the past 50...

The Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) technology has gained great attention in recent years. It is viewed as a low-cost alternative for local large scale aerial mapping and other applications requiring the modeling of a relative small area only. In this paper we describe our UAV mission and the data processing steps to generate a 3D model of the NUS (N...

High resolution satellite images provide abundant information about ground objects. In order to be used in applications like 3D building modeling and fast disaster damage monitoring, highly accurate georeferencing is a prerequisite for information extraction. Due to various reasons, rigorous sensor geometry models to derive 3D ground positions for...

According to pre-planned schedules, a series of two artificial rainfall events were applied to a forested slope in Ruedlingen, northern Switzerland. The experiments were conducted in autumn 2008 and spring 2009, the second of which resulted in mobilising about 130 m 3 of debris. Both experiments were monitored by a photogrammetric camera network in...

Akca etal Gi4DM TRAMM Akca, D., Gruen, A., Askarinejad, A., and Springman, S.M., 2011. Photogrammetric monitoring of an artificially generated landslide. The International Conference on GeoInformation For Disaster Management (Gi4DM'11), Antalya, Turkey, May 3-8 (only on CD-ROM).

According to pre-planned schedules, a series of two artificial rainfall events were applied to a forested slope in Ruedlingen, northern Switzerland. The experiments were conducted in autumn 2008 and spring 2009, the second of which resulted in mobilising about 130 m 3 of debris. Both experiments were monitored by a photogrammetric camera network in...

Akca etal Gi4DM TRAMM PHOTOGRAMMETRIC MONITORING OF AN ARTIFICIALLY GENERATED LANDSLIDE Akca, D., Gruen, A., Askarinejad, A., and Springman, S.M., 2011. Photogrammetric monitoring of an artificially generated landslide. The International Conference on GeoInformation For Disaster Management (Gi4DM'11), Antalya, Turkey, May 3-8 (only on CD-ROM).

This paper contains two main parts. First, we give an overview of photogrammetric and remote sensing techniques in applications related to disaster management procedures. Remotely sensed data potentially provide valuable seismicity-related data in terms of both assessing the potential of risk and defining the state of vulnerability. The paper illus...

Comparing geometrical data in the form of digital surface models (DSMs) can be an interesting approach for detecting and understanding the extent of demolished areas of buildings. The building changes can be automatically detected by simply subtracting one of the DSM data sets from another. DSMs can be derived from variety of sources requiring diff...

After an earthquake, the image-based interpretation methods are powerful tools for detection and classification of damaged buildings. In this paper several methods for extracting imagery features are examined. Experiments are performed on two datasets of the Kobe and Bam earthquakes. We use only the post-earthquake images and the pre-earthquake ima...

A forested area in Ruedlingen, northern Switzerland, was selected to investigate the geotechnical and hydrological response of a steep slope prior to a rainfall induced failure. Artificial rainfall was applied according to a pre-planned schedule and parameters such as pore water pressure, volumetric water content, horizontal soil pressure, temperat...

A large scale field experiment was conducted on a steep forested slope in north Switzerland to trigger a landslide bymeans of artificial rainfall.The experiment was successful and has delivered valuable knowledge about the behaviour of landslides.

Terrestrial Linear Array CCD-based panoramic cameras have been used for purely imaging purposes, but they also have a high potential for use in high accuracy measurement applications. The imaging geometry and the high information content of those images make them suitable candidates for quantitative image analysis. For that a particular sensor mode...

PHOR 2010 25(132) QUALITY ASSESSMENT OF 3D BUILDING DATA The Photogrammetric Record, 25(132): 339–355 (December 2010) Devrim Akca*(akca@isikun.edu.tr) - Isik University, Istanbul, Turkey Mark Freeman(Mark.Freeman@ordnancesurvey.co.uk) Isabel Sargent(Isabel.Sargent@ordnancesurvey.co.uk) - Ordnance Survey Research, Great Britain Armin Gruen(agruen@g...

As part of a long-term project to investigate the cultural history of the Nasca region in southern Peru, the famous Nasca lines, or geoglyphs, have been documented since 1997 in a joint effort by archaeologists and geomatic engineers. The project aims on the one hand at a new interpretation of the geoglyphs based on solid field data. On the other h...

The methods and technologies for generating large area and high-resolution three-dimensional (3D) building and city models offer new possibilities for realistic visualization as well as for multiple analytical interpretations. The major techniques used in reality-based city model generation are considered for their application to building stocks. 3...

The article presents a work-in-progress on the reality-based, multi-resolution and multi-source documentation and digital reconstruction of a part of the ancient Maya kingdom of Copán, Honduras. This international and interdisciplinary project will provide digital 3D models for research and public education purposes. UAV and terrestrial images, tog...

This paper examines the potential of mobile phones to be used as front-end sensors for photogrammetric procedures and applications. For this purpose, two mobile phone cameras (Sony Ericsson K750i and Nokia N93) were calibrated over an indoor 3D testfield, using a self-calibrating bundle adjustment. Geometric accuracy tests were carried out in order...

A method for the fast quality control of 3D city models is presented. The input model (3D building data) is co-registered to the verification data using a 3D surface matching method. The 3D surface matching evaluates the Euclidean distances between the verification and input data sets. The Euclidean distances give appropriate metrics for the 3D mod...

The latest developments in sensors and data processing technology have strongly influenced many disciplines and have led in many cases to completely novel ways as to how the respective work is conducted, with new possibilities for improved data acquisition, handling, and analysis. Archaeology and cultural heritage are definitely among those fields...

PRISM is a panchromatic radiometer carried onboard of the new generation Japanese remote sensing satellite ALOS (Advanced Land Observing Satellite). It has three optical systems for forward, nadir and backward views with 2.5 meter spatial resolution. Multiple Linear Array CCD chips are located on the focal plane of each camera, along one across-tra...

In this paper we discuss the potential of (very) high resolution satellite sensors for 3D data extraction, through a selection of projects carried out at the Institute of Geodesy and Photogrammetry (IGP) at ETH Zurich. For data processing a set of algorithms has been developed by our group and realized in a software suite called SATellite image Pre...

The Research Group Engineering Geodesy, TU Vienna, Austria (Prof. Heribert Kahmen) and the Institute of Geodesy and Photogrammetry, ETH Zurich, Switzerland (Prof. Armin Gruen) are organizing the 9 th Optical 3-D Measurement Techniques Conference which will be held in Vienna from 1 to 3 July 2009.

The radiometric capabilities of two mobile phone cameras (Sony Ericsson K750i and Nokia N93) are examined and compared against two off-the-shelf digital cameras (Sony DCS-T100 and Sony DSC-F828). The radiometric performances were measured in terms of resolution by MTF analysis, noise analysis, and operating range analysis. All tests were conducted...

Fast and cost-effective methods are preferable for many kinds of documentation tasks of natural and cultural heritage objects. Photogrammetry is a quick-and-clean method for the documentation of art objects. Our method has the following advantages: Photogrammetry is a cost-effective method. One person takes the pictures of the object using an (free...

HRS (High Resolution Sensor), carried on SPOT-5, is the first high-resolution sensor on the SPOT constellation that enables the acquisition of stereo images in pushbroom mode from two different directions along the trajectory. The Institute of Geodesy and Photogrammetry (IGP) participated as Co-Investor in the ISPRS-CNES initiative for the investig...

The radiometric capabilities of two mobile phone cameras are examined and compared against two off-the-shelf digital cameras. The radiometric performances are measured in terms of resolution by MTF analysis, noise analysis and linearity test. All tests are conducted with the use of a Siemens Star chart.

High-resolution satellite images (HRSI) at sub-5 m footprint are becoming increasingly available. A set of algorithms for processing of HRSI has been developed at the Institute of Geodesy and Photogrammetry (IGP), ETH Zurich and realised in a software suite called Satellite Image Precision Processing (SAT-PP). The software has been used for the pro...