Method of improving large-scale measurement accuracy of laser tracker based on photogrammetry

Background: When performing the spatial large-scale measurements, the measurement accuracy of laser tracker would decreased with the increase of the measurement distances due to the refraction difference of most optical digital measurement devices. Therefore, this paper proposed a method based on photogrammetry system to improve the large-scale measurement accuracy of the laser tracker. Purpose: The purpose of this method is to improve the large-scale measurement accuracy of the laser tracker by considering the advantages of photogrammetry system such as high measurement accuracy and good portability. Methods: The measurement data from the photogrammetry system would be used as a reference to do correction on measurement results from laser tracker. The coordinate correction method based on Rodrigues’ rotation formula has been discussed. The measurement accuracy of the long-distance point of laser tracker can be significantly improved through the coordinate correction method. Conclusion: Based on the advantages of using photogrammetry system, the proposed method can achieve higher accuracy when measuring the common points at a closer distance than the laser tracker can do when measuring objects far away from instrument. The feasibility of the proposed method has been demonstrated by experiment.